THELO 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 

IN  MEMORY  OF 
EDWIN  CORLE 

PRESENTED  BY 
JEAN  CORLE 


THE  LORDS 
OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 


BY  MR.  SALTUS 

HISTORIA  AMORIS 

IMPERIAL  PURPLE 

MARY  MAGDALEN 

THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

THE  PERFUME  OF  EROS 

VANITY  SQUARE 


THE  LORDS 
OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

A  History  of  the  Ideal 

By 
EDGAR   SALTUS 


"  Errons,  les  doigts  unis,  dans 
1'Alhambra  du  songe." 

RENEE  VIVIEN 


NEW  YORK 

MITCHELL  KENNERLEY 
MCMVII 


COPYRIGHT,  1907 
BY  EDGAR  SALTUS 


The  Plimpton  Press  Norwood  Mass.  U.S.A. 


College 
Library 


THE  LORDS 
OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 


I  Brahma  7 

n  Ormuzd  39 

m  Amon-Ra  60 

IV  Bel-Marduk  81 

V  Jehovah  109 

VI  Zeus  140 

VH  Jupiter  166 

VIH  The  Nee  Plus  Ultra  189 


1164034 


THE   LORDS 
OF   THE   GHOSTLAND 


BRAHMA 

THE  ideal  is  the  essence  of  poetry. 
In  the  virginal  innocence  of  the 
world,  poetry  was  a  term  that  meant 
discourse  of  the  gods.  A  world  grown 
grey  has  learned  to  regard  the  gods  as 
diseases  of  language.  Conceived,  it  may 
be,  in  fevers  of  fancy,  perhaps,  originally, 
they  were  but  deified  words.  Yet,  it  is 
as  children  of  beauty  and  of  dream  that 
they  remain. 

"Mortal  has  made  the  immortal,"  the 
Rig-Veda  explicitly  declares.     The  mak- 
ing   was    surely    slow.     In    tracing   the 
genealogy   of   the   divine,    it   has    been 
[7] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

found  that  its  root  was  fear.  The  root, 
dispersed  by  light,  ultimately  dissolved. 
But,  meanwhile,  it  founded  religion, 
which,  revealed  in  storm  and  panic,  for 
prophets  had  ignorance  and  dread.  The 
gods  were  not  then.  There  were  demons 
only,  more  exactly  there  were  diabolized 
expressions  invented  to  denominate 
natural  phenomena  and  whatever  else 
perturbed.  It  was  in  the  evolution  of 
the  demoniac  that  the  divine  appeared. 
Through  one  of  time's  unmeasurable  gaps 
there  floated  the  idea  that  perhaps  the 
phenomena  that  alarmed  were  but  the 
unconscious  agents  of  superior  minds. 
At  the  suggestion,  irresistibly  a  dramatiza- 
tion of  nature  began  in  which  the  gods 
were  born,  swarms  of  them,  nebulous, 
wayward,  uncertain,  that,  through  further 
gaps,  became  concrete,  became  occa- 
sionally reducible  to  two  great  divinities, 
[8] 


BRAHMA 

earth  and  sky,  whose  union  was  imagined 
—  a  hymen  which  the  rain  suggested  — 
and  from  which  broader  conceptions 
proceeded  and  grander  gods  emerged. 

The  most  poetic  of  these  are  perhaps 
the  Hindu.  At  the  heraldings  of  newer 
gods,  the  lords  of  other  ghostlands  have, 
after  battling  violently,  swooned  utterly 
away.  But  though  many  a  fresher  faith 
has  been  brandished  at  them,  apatheti- 
cally, in  serene  indifference,  the  princes 
of  the  Aryan  sky  endure. 

It  is  their  poetry  that  has  preserved 
them.  To  their  creators  poetry  was 
abundantly  dispensed.  To  no  other 
people  have  myths  been  as  frankly 
transparent.  To  none  other,  save  only 
their  cousins  the  Persians,  have  fancies 
more  luminous  occurred.  The  Persians 
so  polished  their  dreams  that  they  en- 
tranced the  world  that  was.  Poets  can 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

do  no  more.  The  Hindus  too  were  poets. 
They  were  children  as  well.  Their  first 
lisp,  the  first  recorded  stammer  of  Indo- 
European  speech,  is  audible  still  in  the 
Rig-Veda,  a  bundle  of  hymns  tied  to- 
gether, four  thousand  years  ago,  for  the 
greater  glory  of  Fire.  The  worship  of 
the  latter  led  to  that  of  the  Sun  and  ignited 
the  antique  altars.  It  flamed  in  Persia, 
lit  perhaps  the  shrine  of  Vesta,  after- 
ward dazzled  the  Incas,  igniting,  mean- 
while, not  altars  merely,  but  purgatory 
itself. 

In  Persia,  where  it  illuminated  the 
face  of  Ormuzd,  its  beneficence  is  told  in 
the  Avesta,  a  work  of  such  holiness  that 
it  was  polluted  if  seen.  In  the  Rig-Veda, 
there  are  verses  which  were  subsequently 
accounted  so  sacred  that  if  a  soudra  over- 
heard them  the  ignominy  of  his  caste  was 
effaced. 

[10] 


BRAHMA 

The  verses,  the  work  of  shepherds  who 
were  singers,  are  invocations  to  the  dawn, 
to  the  first  flushes  of  the  morning,  to  the 
skies'  heightening  hues,  and  the  vermillion 
moment  when  the  devouring  Asiatic  sun 
appears.  There  are  other  themes,  minor 
melodies,  but  the  chief  inspiration  is 
light. 

To  primitive  shepherds  the  approach 
of  darkness  was  the  coming  of  death. 
The  dawn,  which  they  were  never  wholly 
sure  would  reappear,  was  resurrection. 
They  welcomed  it  with  cries  which  the 
Veda  preserves,  which  the  Avesta  retains 
and  the  Eddas  repeat.  The  potent  forces 
that  produced  night,  the  powers  potenter 
still  that  routed  it,  they  regarded  as  beings 
whose  moods  genuflexions  could  affect. 
In  perhaps  the  same  spirit  that  French- 
men assisted  at  a  lever  du  roi,  and  Eng- 
lishmen attend  a  prince's  levee,  the  Aryan 
[11] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

breakfasted  on  song  and  sacrifice.  It 
was  an  homage  to  the  rising  sun. 

The  sun  was  deva.  The  Sanskrit  root 
diVy  from  which  the  word  is  derived,  pro- 
duced deus,  devi,  divinities  —  number- 
less, accursed,  adored,  or  forgot.  The 
common  term  applied  to  all  abstractions 
that  are  and  have  been  worshipped,  means 
That  which  shines  and  the  name  which, 
in  the  early  Orient,  signified  a  star,  desig- 
nates the  Deity  in  the  Occident  to-day. 

Apologetically,  Tertullian,  a  Christian 
Father,  remarked :  "  Some  think  our  God 
is  the  Sun."  There  were  excuses  per- 
haps for  those  that  did.  Adonai,  a  He- 
brew term  for  the  Almighty,  is  a  plural. 
It  means  lords.  But  the  lords  indi- 
cated were  Baalim  who  were  Lords  of  the 
Sun.  Moreover,  when  the  early  Chris- 
tians prayed,  they  turned  to  the  East. 
Their  holy  day  was,  as  the  holy  day  of 
[12] 


BRAHMA 

Christendom  still  is,  Sunday,  day  of  the 
Sun,  an  expression  that  comes  from  the 
Norse,  on  whom  also  shone  the  light  of 
the  Aryan  deva. 

To  shepherds  who,  in  seeking  pasture 
for  their  flocks,  were  seeking  also  pasture 
for  their  souls,  the  deva  became  Indra. 
They  had  other  gods.  There  was  Agni, 
fire;  Varuna,  the  sky;  Maruts,  the  tem- 
pest. There  was  Mitra,  day,  and  Yama, 
death.  There  were  still  others,  infantile, 
undulant,  fluid,  not  infrequently  ridicu- 
lous also.  But  it  was  Indra  for  whom 
the  dew  and  honey  of  the  morning  hymns 
were  spread.  It  was  Indra  who,  emerg- 
ing from  darkness,  made  the  earth  after 
his  image,  decorated  the  sky  with  con- 
stellations and  wrapped  the  universe  in 
space.  It  was  he  who  poured  indiffer- 
ently on  just  and  unjust  the  triple  torrent 
of  splendour,  light,  and  life. 
[13] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

Indra  was  triple.  Triple  Indra,  the 
Veda  says.  In  that  description  is  the 
preface  to  a  theogony  of  which  Hesiod 
wrote  the  final  page.  It  was  the  germ  of 
sacred  dynasties  that  ruled  the  Aryan  and 
the  Occidental  skies.  From  it  came  the 
grandiose  gods  of  Greece  and  Rome. 
From  it  also  came  the  paler  deities  of 
the  Norse.  Meanwhile  ages  fled.  Life 
nomad  and  patriarchal  ceased.  From 
forest  and  plain,  temples  arose;  from 
hymns,  interpretations;  from  prayer, 
metaphysics;  for  always  man  has  tried  to 
analyze  the  divine,  always  too,  at  some 
halt  in  life,  he  has  looked  back  and  found 
it  absent. 

In  meditation  it  was  discerned  that 
Indra  was  an  effect,  not  the  cause.  It 
was  discerned  also  that  that  cause  was  not 
predicable  of  the  gods  who,  in  their  un- 
dulance  and  fluidity,  suggested  ceaseless 
[14] 


BRAHMA 

transformations  and  consequently  some- 
thing that  is  transformed. 

The  idea,  patiently  elaborated,  re- 
sulted in  a  drainage  of  the  fluid  myths 
and  the  exteriorisation  of  a  being  entirely 
abstract.  Designated  first  as  Brahmana- 
spati,  Lord  of  Prayer,  afterward  more 
simply  as  Brahma,  he  was  assumed  to  have 
been  asleep  in  the  secret  places  of  the  sky, 
from  which,  on  awakening,  he  created 
what  is. 

The  conception,  ideal  itself,  was  not, 
however,  ideal  enough.  The  labour  of 
creating  was  construed  as  a  blemish  on 
the  splendour  of  the  Supreme.  It  was 
held  that  the  Soul  of  Things  could  but 
loll,  majestic  and  inert,  on  a  lotos  of  azure. 
Then,  above  Brahma,  was  lifted  Brahm, 
a  god  neuter  and  indeclinable;  neuter  as 
having  no  part  in  life,  indeclinable  be- 
cause unique. 

[15] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

There  was  the  apex  of  the  world's  most 
poetic  creed,  one  distinguished  over  all 
others  in  having  no  founder,  unless  a 
heavenly  inspiration  be  so  regarded.  But 
the  apex  required  a  climax.  Inspiration 
provided  it. 

The  forms  of  matter  and  of  man,  the 
glittering  apsaras  of  the  vermillion  dawns, 
Indra  himself,  these  and  all  things  else 
were  construed  into  a  bubble  that  Brahm 
had  blown.  The  semblance  of  reality  in 
which  men  occur  and,  with  them,  the  days 
of  their  temporal  breath,  was  attributed 
not  to  the  actual  but  to  Maya — the  magic 
of  a  high  god's  longing  for  something 
other  than  himself,  something  that  should 
contrast  with  his  eternal  solitude  and  fill 
the  voids  of  his  infinite  ennui.  From 
that  longing  came  the  bubble,  a  phantom 
universe,  the  mirage  of  a  god's  desire. 
Earth;  sea  and  sky;  all  that  in  them  is,  all 
[16] 


BRAHMA 

that  has  been  and  shall  be,  are  but  the 
changing  convolutions  of  a  dream. 

In  that  dream  there  descended  a  scale 
of  beings,  above  whom  were  set  three 
great  lords,  Brahma  the  Creator,  Vishnu 
the  Preserver,  and  Siva  the  Destroyer,  col- 
lectively the  Tri-murti,  the  Hindu  trin- 
ity expressed  in  the  mystically  ineffable 
syllable  Om.  Between  the  trinity  and 
man  came  other  gods,  a  whole  host, 
powers  of  light  and  powers  of  darkness, 
the  divine  and  the  demoniac  fused  in  a 
hierarchy  surprising  but  not  everlasting. 
Eventually  the  dream  shall  cease,  the 
bubble  break,  the  universe  collapse,  the 
heavens  be  folded  like  a  tent,  the  Tri- 
murti  dissolved,  and  in  space  will  rest  but 
the  Soul  of  Things,  at  whose  will  atoms 
shall  reassemble  and  forms  unite,  dis- 
unite and  reappear,  depart  and  return, 
endlessly,  in  recurring  cycles. 
[17] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

That  conception,  the  basis  perhaps  of 
the  theory  of  cosmological  days,  is  per- 
haps also  itself  but  a  dream,  yet  one  that, 
however  defective,  has  a  beauty  which 
must  have  been  too  fair.  Brahma, 
Vishnu,  Siva,  originally  regarded  as  ema- 
nations of  the  ideal,  became  concrete. 
Consorts  were  found  for  them.  From 
infinity  they  were  lodged  in  idols.  A 
worship  sensuous  when  not  grotesque 
ensued,  from  which  the  ideal  took  flight. 

That  was  the  work  of  the  clergy. 
Brahmanism  is  also.  The  archaic  con- 
flict between  light  and  darkness,  the 
triumph  of  the  former  over  the  latter, 
diminished,  at  their  hands,  into  the  figura- 
tive. That  is  only  reasonable.  It  was 
only  reasonable  also  that  they  should 
claim  the  triumph  as  their  own.  Without 
them  the  gods  could  do  nothing.  They 
would  not  even  be.  In  the  Rig-Veda 
[18] 


BRAHMA 

and  the  Vedas  generally  they  are  trans- 
parent. The  subsequent  evolution  of  the 
Paramatma,  the  Tri-murti  and  the  hier- 
archy, had,  for  culmination,  the  apo- 
theosis of  a  priesthood  that  had  invented 
them  and  who,  for  the  invention,  de- 
served the  apotheosis  which  they  claimed 
and  got.  They  were  priests  that  were 
poets,  and  poets  that  were  seers.  But 
they  were  not  sorcerers.  They  could  not 
provide  successors  equal  to  themselves. 
It  was  the  later  clergy  that  pulled  poetry 
from  the  infinite,  stuffed  it  into  idols  and 
prostituted  it  to  nameless  shames. 

In  the  Bhagavad-Gita  it  is  written: 
"  Nothing  is  greater  than  I.  In  scriptures 
I  am  prayer.  I  am  perfume  in  flowers, 
brilliance  in  light.  I  am  life  and  its 
source.  I  am  the  soul  of  creation.  I  am 
the  beginning  and  the  end.  I  am  the 
Divine." 

[19] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

That  is  Brahm.  Ormuzd  has  faded. 
Zeus  has  passed.  Jupiter  has  gone. 
With  them  the  divinities  of  Egypt  and 
the  lords  of  the  Chaldean  sky  have  been 
reabsorbed  and  forgot.  Brahm  still  is. 
The  cohorts  of  Cyrus  might  pray  Ormuzd 
to  peer  where  he  glowed.  There,  the 
phalanxes  of  Alexander  might  raise  altars 
to  Zeus.  Parthians  and  Tatars  might 
dispute  the  land  and  the  god.  Muham- 
madans  could  bring  their  Allah  and 
Christians  their  creed.  Indifferently 
Brahm  has  dreamed,  knowing  that  he 
has  all  time  as  these  all  have  their 
day. 

The  conception  of  that  apathy,  gran- 
diose in  itself  and  marvellous  in  its  per- 
sistence, was  due  to  unknown  poets  that 
had  in  them  the  true  souffle  of  the  real 
ideal.  But  that  also  demanded  a  climax. 
They  produced  it  in  the  theory  that  the 
[20] 


BRAHMA 

afflictions  of  this  life  are  due  to  trans- 
gressions in  another. 

From  afflictions  death,  they  taught,  is 
not  a  release,  for  the  reason  that  there 
is  no  death.  There  is  but  absorption  in 
Brahm.  Yet  that  consummation  cannot 
occur  until  all  transgressions,  past  and 
present,  have  been  expiated  and  the  soul, 
lifted  from  the  eddies  of  migration,  be- 
comes Brahm  himself. 

To  be  absorbed,  to  be  Brahm,  to  be 
God,  is  an  ambition,  certainly  vertigi- 
nous yet  as  surely  divine.  But  to  suc- 
ceed, consciousness  of  success  must  be 
lost.  A  mortal  cannot  attain  divinity  un- 
til annihilation  is  complete.  To  become 
God  nothing  must  be  left  of  man.  To 
loose,  then,  every  bond,  to  be  freed  from 
every  tie,  to  retire  from  finite  things,  to 
mount  to  and  sink  in  the  immutable,  to  see 
Death  die,  was  and  is  the  Hindu  ideal. 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

Of  the  elect,  that  is.  Of  the  higher 
castes,  of  the  priest,  of  the  prince.  But 
not  of  the  people.  The  ideal  was  not  for 
them,  salvation  either.  It  was  idle  even 
to  think  about  it.  Set  in  hell,  they  had  to 
return  here  until  in  some  one  of  the 
twenty-four  lakhs  of  birth  which  the 
chain  of  migrations  comports,  and  which 
to  saint  and  soudra  were  alike  dispensed, 
they  arrived  here  in  the  purple.  Then 
only  was  the  opportunity  theirs  to  rescale 
a  sky  that  was  reserved  for  prelates  and 
rajahs. 

Suddenly,  to  the  pariah,  to  the  hopeless, 
to  those  who  outcast  in  hell  were  outcast 
from  heaven,  an  erect  and  facile  ladder  to 
that  sky  was  brought.  The  Buddha  fur- 
nished it.  If  he  did  not,  a  college  of  dis- 
sidents assumed  that  he  had,  and  in  his 
name  indicated  a  stairway  which,  set 
among  the  people,  all  might  mount  and 
[22] 


BRAHMA 

at  whose  summit  gods  actually  material- 
ized. 

To  those  who  believe  in  the  Dalai 
Lama  —  there  are  millions  that  have  be- 
lieved, there  are  millions  that  do  —  he  is 
not  a  vicar  of  the  divine,  he  is  himself 
divine,  a  god  in  a  tenement  of  flesh  who, 
as  such,  though  he  die,  immediately  is 
reincarnated ;  a  god  therefore  always  pres- 
ent among  his  people,  whose  history  is  a 
continuous  gospel.  In  contemporaneous 
Italy,  a  peasant  may  aspire  to  the  papacy. 
In  the  uplands  of  Asia,  men  have  loftier 
ambitions.  There  they  may  become  Bud- 
dha, who  perhaps  never  was,  except  in 
legend. 

In  the  Lalita  Vistdra  the  legend  un- 
folds. In  the  strophes  of  the  poem  one 
may  asist  at  the  Buddha's  birth,  an  event 
which  is  said  to  have  occurred  at  Kapila- 
vastu.  Oriental  geography  is  unac- 
[23] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

quainted  with  the  place.  With  the  thing 
even  Occidental  philosophy  is  familiar. 
Kapilavastu  means  the  substance  of 
Kapila.  The  substance  is  atheism. 

History  has  its  hesitancies.  Often  it 
stammers  uncertainly.  But  its  earliest 
pages  agree  in  representing  Kapila  as  the 
initial  religious  rebel.  Kapila  was  the 
first  to  declare  the  divine  a  human  and 
invalid  conjecture.  The  announcement, 
with  its  prefaces  and  deductions,  is  con- 
tained in  the  Sankhya  Karika,  a  system 
of  rationalism,  still  read  in  India,  where 
it  is  known  as  the  godless  tract. 

In  the  Orient,  existence  is  usually  a 
sordid  nightmare  when  it  does  not  happen 
to  be  a  golden  dream.  Kapila  taught 
that  it  was  a  prison  from  which  release 
could  be  had  only  through  intellectual 
development.  That  is  Kapilavastu,  the 
substance  of  Kapila,  where  the  Buddha 
[24] 


BRAHMA 

was  born.     In  the  Lalita  Vistdra  it  is 
fairyland. 

There,  Gotama  the  Buddha  is  the 
Prince  Charming  of  a  sovereign  house. 
But  a  prince  who  developed  into  a  nihilist 
prior  tore-becoming  the  god  that  anteriorly 
he  had  been.  It  was  while  in  heaven  that 
he  selected  Maya,  a  ranee,  to  be  his 
mother.  It  was  surrounded  by  the  heav- 
enly that  he  appeared.  The  fields  foamed 
with  flowers.  The  skies  flamed  with 
faces.  In  the  air  apsaras  floated,  fanning 
themselves  with  peacocks'  tails.  The  gal- 
leries of  the  palace  festooned  themselves 
with  pearls.  On  the  terraces  a  rain  of 
perfume  fell.  In  the  parterres  Maya 
strolled.  A  tree  bent  and  bowed  to  her. 
Touching  a  branch  with  her  hand  she 
looked  up  and  yawned.  Painlessly  from 
her  immaculate  breast  Gotama  issued. 
An  immense  lotos  sprouted  to  receive 
[25] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

him.  To  cover  him  a  parasol  dropped 
from  above.  He,  however,  already  oc- 
cupied, was  contemplating  space,  the 
myriad  worlds,  the  myriad  lives,  and  an- 
nounced himself  their  saviour.  At  once 
a  deluge  of  roses  descended.  The  efful- 
gence of  a  hundred  thousand  colours 
shone.  A  spasm  of  delight  pulsated.  Sor- 
row and  anger,  envy  and  fear,  fled  and 
fainted.  From  the  zenith  came  a  mur- 
mur of  voices,  the  sound  of  dancing,  the 
kiss  of  timbril  and  of  lute. 

That  is  Oriental  poetry.  Oriental 
philosophy  is  less  ornate.  From  the 
former  the  Buddha  could  not  have  come. 
From  the  latter  he  probably  did,  if  not 
in  flesh  at  least  in  spirit.  To  that  spirit 
antiquity  was  indebted,  as  modernity  is 
equally,  for  the  doctrines  of  a  teacher 
known  variously  as  Gotama  the  Enlight- 
ened and  Sakya  the  Sage.  Whether  or 
[26] 


BRAHMA 

not  the  teacher  himself  existed  is,  there- 
fore, unimportant.  The  existence  of  the 
Christ  has  been  doubted.  But  the  doc- 
trines of  both  survive.  They  do  more, 
they  enchant.  Occasionally  they  seem 
to  combine.  The  Gospels  have  obviously 
nothing  in  common  with  the  Lalita  Vis- 
tara,  which  is  an  apocryphal  novel  of  un- 
certain date.  The  resemblance  that  is 
reflected  comes  from  the  Tripitaka,  the 
Three  Baskets  that  constitute  the  evangels 
of  the  Buddhist  faith. 

In  an  appendix  to  the  Mahavdggo,  it 
is  stated  that  disciples  of  Gotama,  who 
knew  his  sermons  and  his  parables  by 
heart,  determined  the  canon  "after  his 
death."  The  expression  might  mean  any- 
thing. But  a  ponderable  antiquity  is 
otherwise  shown.  Asoko,  a  Hindu  em- 
peror, sent  an  embassy  to  Ptolemy  Phila- 
delphos.  The  circumstance  was  set  forth 
[27] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

bilingually  on  various  heights.  In  an- 
other inscription  Asoko  recommended 
the  study  of  the  Tripitaka  and  mentioned 
titles  of  the  books.  Ptolemy  Philadel- 
phos  reigned  at  Alexandria  in  the  early 
part  of  the  third  century  B.C.  The  Tripi- 
taka must  therefore  have  existed  then. 
But  the  thirty -seventh  year  of  Asoko 's 
reign  was,  in  a  third  inscription,  counted 
as  the  two  hundred  and  fifty-seventh  from 
the  Buddha's  death,  a  reckoning  which 
makes  them  much  older.  Their  existence, 
however,  as  a  fourth  inscription  shows, 
was  oral.  Transmitted  for  hundreds  of 
years  by  trained  schools  of  reciters,  it 
was  during  a  synod  that  occurred  in  the 
first  quarter  of  the  first  century  before 
Christ  that,  finally,  they  were  written. 

In  them  it  is  recited  that  Maya,  the 
mother    of    Gotama,    was    immaculate. 
According  to  St.   Matthew,  Maria,  the 
[28] 


BRAHMA 

mother  of  Jesus,  was  also.  Previously, 
in  each  instance,  the  coming  of  a  Messiah 
had  been  foretold.  The  infant  Jesus 
was  visited  by  magi.  The  infant  Buddha 
was  visited  by  kings.  Afterward,  neither 
Jesus  or  Gotama  wrote.  But  both 
preached  charity,  chastity,  poverty,  hu- 
mility, and  abnegation  of  self.  Both 
fasted  in  a  wilderness.  Both  were 
tempted  by  a  devil.  Both  announced  a 
second  advent.  Both  were  transfigured. 
Both  died  in  the  open  air.  At  the  death 
of  each  there  was  an  earthquake.  Both 
healed  the  sick.  Both  were  the  light  of  a 
world  which  both  said  would  cease  to  be. 
According  to  Luke,  a  courtesan  visited 
Jesus  and  had  her  sins  remitted.  Accord- 
ing to  the  Mahdvaggo,  Gotama  was 
visited  by  a  harlot  whom  he  instructed 
in  things  divine.1  In  Matthew,  Jesus  is 

1  Luke  vii.  37-50.    Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  xi.  SO. 
[29] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

depicted  as  a  glutton  and  a  wine-bibber. 
In  the  Mahdvaggo,  the  picture  of  Gotama 
is  the  same.1  In  Matthew  it  is  written; 
"Lay  not  up  for  yourselves  treasures  on 
earth,  where  moth  and  rust  doth  con- 
sume and  where  thieves  break  through 
and  steal/'  The  Khuddakapatho  says: 
"Righteousness  is  a  treasure  which  no 
man  can  steal.  It  is  a  treasure  that 
abideth  alway."2  In  Luke  it  is  written: 
"As  ye  would  that  men  should  do  unto 
you,  do  ye  also  unto  them."  The  Dham- 
maphada  say:  "Put  yourself  in  the  place 
of  others,  do  as  you  would  be  done  by.'*3 
The  miracle  of  walking  on  the  water, 
that  of  the  money-bearing  fish,  the  story 
of  the  Woman  at  the  Well,  the  proclama- 
tion of  an  unpardonable  sin,  even  the 
mediaeval  myth  of  the  Wandering  Jew, 

1  Matthew  xi,  19.    S.  B.  E.  xiii.  92. 

2  Matthew  vi.  19.    S.  B.  E.  x.  191. 
•Lukevi.  31.    S.  B.  E.  x.  36. 

[30] 


BRAHMA 

may     have     originated      in     Buddhist 
legend.1 

Pious  minds  have  been  disturbed  by 
these  similitudes.  The  resemblance  be- 
tween Maya  and  Maria  has  perplexed. 
The  perhaps  uncertain  likeness  of  Gota- 
ma  to  Jesus  has  occasioned  irreverent 
doubts.  But  the  parallelisms  may  be 
fortuitous.  Probably  they  are.  Even 
otherwise  they  but  enhance  the  sororal 
beauties  of  faiths  which  if  cognate  are 
quite  distinct.  Then  too  the  penetrating 
charm  of  the  parables  and  sermons  of  the 
Buddha  fades  before  the  perfection  of 
the  sermons  and  parables  of  the  Christ. 
The  birth,  ministry,  transfiguration,  and 
passing  of  Gotama  are  marvels  which, 
however  exquisite,  the  wholly  spiritual 
apparitions  of  the  Lord  efface. 

Other  similarities,  such  as  they  are,  may 
1  Cf.  Edmunds :  Buddhist  and  Christian  Gospels. 
[31] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTIAND 

without  impropriety,  perhaps,  be  attributed 
to  the  ideals  progressus.  Hindu  and 
Chaldean  beliefs  constitute  the  two  primal 
inspirational  faiths.  From  the  one,  Bud- 
dhism and  Zoroasterism  developed.  From 
the  other  the  creed  of  Israel  and  possibly 
that  of  Egypt  came.  Religions  that  fol- 
lowed were  afterthoughts  of  the  divine. 
They  were  revelations  sometimes  more 
intelligible,  in  one  instance  inexpressibly 
more  luminous,  yet  invariably  reminis- 
cent of  an  anterior  light. 

The  light  of  contemporaneous  Bud- 
dhism is  that  of  Catholicism — heaven  de- 
ducted, a  heaven,  that  is,  of  ceaseless 
Magnificats.  The  latter  conception  is 
Christian.  But  it  was  Persian  first. 
Otherwise,  in  common  with  the  Church, 
Buddhism  has  saints,  censers,  litanies, 
tonsures,  holy  water,  fasts,  and  confession. 
Barring  confession,  the  extreme  antiquity 
[32] 


BRAHMA 

of  which  has  been  attested,  the  other 
rites  and  ceremonies  are,  it  may  be, 
borrowed,  but  not  the  high  morality,  the 
altruism,  the  renunciation  and  efface- 
ment  of  self,  which  Buddhists  no  longer 
very  scrupulously  observe,  perhaps,  but 
which  their  religion  was  the  first  to  instil. 

Buddhism  originally  had  neither  rites 
nor  ritual.  It  was  merely  a  mendicant 
order  in  which  one  tried  to  do  what  is 
right,  with,  for  reward,  the  hope  of 
Pratscha-Paramita,  the  peace  that  is 
beyond  all  knowledge  and  which  Nirvana 
provides.  That  peace  is  —  or  was  —  the 
complete  absence  of  anything,  extinction 
utter  and  everlasting,  a  state  of  absolute 
non-existence  which  no  whim  of  Brahm 
may  disturb. 

Buddhism   denied   Brahm   and   every 
tenet   of   Brahmanism,    save   only   that 
which  concerned  the  immedicable  misery 
[33] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

of  life.  Of  final  deliverance  there  was  in 
Brahmanism  no  known  mode.  None  at 
least  that  was  exoteric.  Brahmanism 
rolled  man  ceaselessly  through  all  forms 
of  existence,  from  the  elementary  to  the 
divine,  and  even  from  the  latter,  even 
when  he  was  absorbed  in  Brahm,  flung 
him  out  and  back  into  a  fresh  circle  of 
unavoidable  births. 

The  theory  is  horrible.  In  the  horrible 
occasionally  is  the  sublime.  To  Gotama 
it  was  merely  absurd.  He  blew  on  it. 
Abruptly,  the  categories  of  the  infinite, 
the  infant  gods,  shapes  divine  and  de- 
moniac, the  entire  phantasmagoria  of 
metempsychosis,  seemed  really  absorbed 
and  Brahm  himself  ablated.  For  a  mo- 
ment the  skies,  sterilized  by  a  breath, 
seemingly  were  vacant.  Actually  they 
were  never  more  peopled.  Behind  the 
pall,  tossed  on  an  antique  faith,  new  gods 
[34] 


BRAHMA 

were  crouching  and  waiting.  Buddhistic 
atheism  had  resulted  but  in  the  produc- 
tion of  an  earlier  New  Testament.  From 
the  depths  of  the  ideal,  swarms  of  bedecked 
and  bejewelled  divinities  escorted  Brahm 
back  to  a  lotos  of  azure.  Coincidentally 
Gotama,  enthroned  in  the  zenith,  con- 
templated clusters  of  gods  that  dangled 
through  twenty-eight  abodes  of  bliss 
which  other  poets  created. 

In  demonstrable  triumph  the  Buddha 
was  then,  as  he  has  been  since,  even  if 
previously  his  existence  had  been  omitted. 
But  though  he  never  were,  there  never- 
theless occurred  a  social  revolution  of 
which  he  was  the  nominal  originator  and 
which,  had  it  not  been  diverted  into  other 
realms,  might  have  resulted  in  Brahm 's 
entire  extinction. 

Wolves  do  not  devour  each  other. 
Ideals  should  not  either.  The  Oriental 
[35] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

heavens  were  wide  enough  to  serve  as 
fastnesses  for  two  sets  of  hostile,  germane, 
and  ineffably  poetic  aberrations.  There 
was  room  even  for  more.  There  always 
should  be.  Of  the  divine  one  can  have 
never  enough. 

The  gospel  according  to  Sakya  the 
Eremite  is  divine.  It  is  divine  in  its 
limitless  compassion,  and  though  com- 
passion, when  analyzed,  becomes  but 
egotism  in  an  etherialized  form,  yet  the 
gospel  had  other  attractions.  In  dem- 
onstrating that  life  is  evil,  that  rebirth  is 
evil  too,  that  to  be  born  even  a  god  is  evil 
still, — in  demonstrating  these  things,  while 
insisting  that  all  else,  Buddhism  included, 
is  but  vanity,  it  fractured  the  charm  of 
error  in  which  man  had  been  confined. 

Sakya  saw  men  born  and  reborn  in 
hell.  He  saw  them  ignorant,  as  human- 
ity has  always  been,  unaware  of  their  ab- 
[36] 


BRAHMA 

jection  as  men  are  to-day,  and  over  the 
gulfs  of  existence,  through  the  torrents 
of  rebirth,  he  offered  to  ferry  them.  But 
in  the  ferrying  they  had  to  aid.  The  aid 
consisted  in  the  rigorous  observance  of 
every  virtue  that  Christianity  afterward 
professed.  Therein  is  the  beauty  of  Bud- 
dhism. Its  profundity  resided  in  a  revela- 
tion that  everything  human  perishes  except 
actions  and  the  consequences  that  ensue. 
To  orthodox  India  its  tenets  were  as  heret- 
ical as  those  of  Christianity  were  to  the 
Jews.  Nonetheless  the  doctrine  became 
popular.  But  doctrines  once  popularized 
lose  their  nobility.  The  degeneracy  of 
Buddhism  is  due  to  Cathay. 

To  the  Hindu  life  was  an  incident  be- 
tween two  eternities,  an  episode  in  the 
string  of  deaths  and  rebirths.  To  Mon- 
golians it  was  a  unique  experience.  They 
had  no  knowledge  of  the  supersensible, 
[37] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

no  suspicion  of  the  ideal.  Among  them 
Buddhism  operated  a  conversion.  It 
stimulated  a  thirst  for  the  divine. 

The  thirst  is  unquenchable.  Buddhism, 
in  its  simple  severity,  could  not  even 
attempt  to  slake  it.  But  on  its  simplicity 
a  priesthood  shook  parures.  Its  severity 
was  cloaked  with  mantles  of  gold.  The 
founder,  an  atheist  who  had  denied  the 
gods,  was  transformed  into  one.  About 
him  a  host  of  divinities  was  strung. 
The  most  violently  nihilistic  of  doctrines 
was  fanned  into  an  idolatry  puerile  and 
meek.  Nirvana  became  Elysium,  and  a 
religion  which  began  as  a  heresy  cul- 
minated in  a  superstition.  That  is  the 
history  of  creeds. 


[38] 


II 

ORMUZD 

THE  purest  of  thoughts  is  that  which 
concerns  the  beginning  of  things.'* 

So    Ormuzd    instructed    Zarathrustra. 

"And  what  was  there  at  the  begin- 
ning?" the  prophet  asked. 

"  There  was  light  and  the  living  Word."1 
Long  later  the  statement  was  repeated  in 
the  Gospel  attributed  to  John.  Origi- 
nally it  occurred  in  the  course  of  a  con- 
versation that  the  Avesta  reports.  In  a 
similar  manner  Exodus  provides  a  revela- 
tion which  Moses  received.  There  Je- 
hovah said:  'ehydh  'asher  'ehydh.  In 
the  Avesta  Ormuzd  said:  ahmi  yad 

1  Avesta  (Anquetil-Duperron),  i.  393. 
[39] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

ahmi.1  Word  for  word  the  declarations 
are  identical.  Each  means  I  am  that  I 
am.2 

The  conformity  of  the  pronouncements 
may  be  fortuitous.  Their  relative  priority 
uncertain  chronology  obscures.  The  date 
that  orthodoxy  has  assigned  to  Moses  is 
about  1500  B.C.  Plutarch  said  that  Zara- 
thrustra  lived  five  thousand  years  before 
the  fall  of  Troy.  Both  dates  are  per- 
haps questionable.  But  a  possible  hy- 
pothesis philology  provides.  The  term 
Jehovah  is  a  seventeenth -century  expan- 
sion of  the  Hebrew  !T)fT  or  Jhvh,  now 
usually  written  Jahveh  and  commonly 
translated:  He  who  causes  to  be.  The 
original  rendering  of  Ormuzd  is  Ahura- 
mazda.  Ahura  means  living  and  mazdao 
creator.  The  period  when  Exodus  was 

1 A  vesta,  Honnazd  Yasht. 
3  Exodus  iii.  14. 

[40] 


ORMUZD 

written  is  probablypost-exilic.  The  period 
when  the  Avesta  was  completed  is  as- 
sumed to  be  pre-Cyrian.  It  was  at  the 
junction  of  the  two  epochs  that  Iran  and 
Israel  met. 

But,  however  the  pronouncements  may 
conform,  however  also  they  may  confuse, 
the  one  reported  in  Exodus  is  alone  exact. 
In  subsequent  metamorphoses  the  name 
might  fade,  the  deity  remained.  Where- 
as, save  to  diminishing  Parsis,  Ormuzd, 
once  omnipotent  throughout  the  Persian 
sky,  has  gone.  A  time,  though,  there  was, 
when  from  his  throne  in  the  ideal  he 
menaced  the  apathy  of  Brahm,  the  maj- 
esty of  Zeus,  when  even  from  the  death 
of  deaths  he  might  have  ejected  Buddha 
and,  supreme  in  the  Orient,  ruled  also  in 
the  West.  Salamis  prevented  that.  But 
one  may  wonder  whether  the  conquest 
had  not  already  been  effected,  whether 
[41] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

for  that  matter  the  results  are  not  appar- 
ent still.  Brahma,  Ormuzd,  Zeus,  Ju- 
piter, are  but  different  conceptions  of  a 
primal  idea.  They  are  four  great  gods 
diversely  represented  yet  originally  iden- 
tical, and  whose  attributes  Jahveh,  in  his 
ascensions,  perhaps  absorbed. 

Ormuzd  represented  purity  and  light. 
For  his  worship  no  temple  was  necessary, 
barely  a  shrine,  never  an  image.  In  his 
celestial  court  were  parikas,  the  glittering 
bayaderes  of  love  that  a  later  faith  called 
peris,  but  his  sole  consorts  were  Prayers. 
About  him  and  them  gathered  amshas- 
pands  and  izeds,  angels  and  seraphs,  the 
winged  host  of  loveliness  that  in  Baby- 
lon enthralled  the  Jews  who  returned 
from  captivity  escorted  by  them.  The 
allurement  of  their  charm,  enchanting 
then,  enchants  the  world  to-day.  There 
has  been  little  that  is  more  poetic,  except 
[42] 


ORMUZD 

perhaps  Ormuzd  himself,  who  symbolized 
whatever  is  blinding  in  beauty,  particularly 
the  sun's  effulgence,  the  radiance  of  light. 

The  light  endures,  though  the  god  has 
gone.  Yet  at  the  time,  aloof  in  clear 
ether  and  aloft,  he  resplended  in  a  sover- 
eignty that  only  Ahriman  disputed. 

Ahriman  has  been  more  steadfast  than 
Ormuzd.  He  too  captivated  the  captive 
Hebrews.  The  latter  adopted  him  and 
called  him  Satan,  as  they  also  adopted 
one  of  his  minor  legates,  Ashmodai  — 
transformed  by  the  Vulgate  into  Asmo- 
deus  —  a  little  jealous  devil  who,  in  the 
apocryphal  Tobit,  strangled  husbands  on 
their  bridal  nights.  Ahriman,  his  master, 
represented  everything  that  was  the  oppo- 
site of  Ormuzd.  Ahriman  dwelt  in  dark- 
ness, Ormuzd  in  light.  Ormuzd  was 
primate  of  purity;  Ahriman,  prince  of 
whatever  is  base.  One  had  angels  and 
[43] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

archangels  for  aids,  the  other  fiends  and 
demons.  Between  their  forces  war  was 
constant.  Each  strove  for  the  soul  of 
man.  But  after  death,  when,  in  the  bal- 
ance, the  deeds  of  the  defunct  were 
weighed,  there  appeared  a  golden-eyed 
redeemer,  Mithra,  who  so  closely  re- 
sembled the  Christ  that  the  world  hesi- 
tated, for  a  moment,  between  them. 

It  was  because  of  these  conceptions 
that  Persia  dreamed  of  conquering  the 
West.  At  Marathon  and  at  Salamis  that 
illusion  was  looted.  History  tells  of  the 
cohorts  that  descended  there.  It  relates 
further  what  they  did.  But  of  what  they 
thought  there  is  no  record.  It  was,  per- 
haps, too  obvious.  Ormuzd,  god  of  light 
and,  in  the  Orient,  god  of  the  day,  was, 
in  the  darker  and  duller  Occident,  men- 
aced there  also  by  Ahriman.  Politically 
the  expedition  is  not  very  explicable. 
[44] 


ORMUZD 

Considered  from  a  religous  standpoint  the 
motive  is  clear.  But  though  the  Persian 
forces  could  not  uphold  their  light  in 
Greece,  higher  forces  projected  it  far  be- 
yond, to  the  remote  north,  to  a  south 
that  was  still  remoter. 

Originally  the  light  was  Vedic.  It  was 
identical  with  that  of  Agni,  of  Indra  and 
of  Varuna.  But  while  these,  without 
subsidence,  passed,  absorbed  by  Brahm, 
the  light  of  Iran,  deflecting,  persisted, 
and  so  potently  that  it  lit  the  Teutonic 
sky,  glows  still  in  Christendom,  after 
refracting  perhaps  in  Inca  temples.  Its 
revelation  is  due  to  Zarathrustra. 

Zarathrustra,  commonly  written  Zoro- 
aster, is  a  name  translatable  into  "star 
of  gold  "  and  also  into  "  keeper  of  old 
camels."  Probably  it  was  first  employed 
to  designate  an  imaginary  prophet,  and 
then  a  series  of  spiritual  though  actual 
[45] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

successors  by  whom,  in  the  course  of  cen- 
turies, the  Avesta  was  evolved.  Otherwise 
Zarathrustra  and  Gotama  are  brothers 
in  Brahmanaspati.  Both  had  virgin 
mothers.  In  the  lives  of  both  mira- 
cles are  common.  The  advent  of  Zara- 
thrustra was  accounted  the  ruin  of 
demons.  When  he  was  born  he  laughed 
aloud.  As  a  child  he  slept  in  flames. 
As  a  man  he  walked  on  water.  Before 
prodigies  such  as  these  fiends  fell  like 
autumn  leaves.  Hence,  on  the  part  of 
the  devil,  an  attempt  to  seduce  him  from 
the  divine.  Mairya,  the  demon  of  death, 
offered  him,  as  Mara  offered  Gotama, 
as  Satan  offered  Jesus,  the  empire  of  the 
earth.  Zarathrustra  rebuked  the  devil 
first  with  stones,  then  with  pious  words. 
From  him,  as  from  the  Buddha  and  the 
Christ,  abashed  the  tempter  retreated.1 

1  Darmestetter:  Ormazd  et  Ahriman. 
[46] 


ORMUZD 

That  victory  over  evil,  the  Parsis  to- 
day regard  as  the  capital  event  in  the 
history  of  the  world.  It  was  the  imme- 
diate prelude  to  the  revelation  of  the  Law 
which  Ormuzd  vouchsafed  to  his  prophet. 

The  revelation  occurred  on  a  moun- 
tain, in  the  course  of  conversations,  dur- 
ing which  Zarathrustra  questioned  and 
Ormuzd,  in  the  voice  of  heaven,  replied. 
So  was  the  Law  proclaimed  in  India. 
There  Mitra  and  Varuna  sang  it  through 
the  sky.1  The  expression  is  notable,  for 
the  song  of  the  sky  is  thunder  and  the 
theophany  that  of  Sinai.  There  is  an- 
other rapprochement  in  Babylonian  lore 
and  a  third  in  the  Eddas,  where  it  is  re- 
lated that  to  Sigurd  the  secret  of  the 
runes  was  sung. 

Meanwhile,  the  revelation  completed 
and  proclaimed,  Zarathrustra  died  as 

1  Rig-Veda,  i.  151. 
[47] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

miraculously  as  he  was  born,  foretelling, 
as  he  went,  the  coming  of  a  messiah,  his 
own  son,  Coshyos  —  the  delayed  fruit  of 
an  immaculate  hymen  that  is  not  to  be 
fecund  until  the  end  of  time  —  but  who, 
at  the  consummation  of  the  ages,  will 
rejuvenate  the  world,  affranchise  it  from 
death,  vanquish  Ahriman,  terminate  the 
struggle  between  good  and  evil,  purify 
hell  and  fill  it  full  with  glory.  Then  the 
dead  shall  rise  and  immortality  be  uni- 
versal.1 

Zoroaster  is  obviously  mythical.  The 
Buddha  is  also.  But  precisely  as  the 
Buddhist  scriptures  exist,  so  also  do  the 
Zoroastrian.  They  do  more.  Frequently 
they  enlighten,  occasionally  they  exalt. 
Written  in  gold  on  perfumed  leather, 
the  original  edition,  limited  to  two  copies, 
was  so  sacred  that  it  was  sullied  if  seen. 

1  Zamyad  Yasht.  xix.  89  sq. 
[48] 


ORMUZD 

Burned  with  the  palace  of  Persepolis  — 
which  Alexander,  the  Great  Sinner,  in  a 
drunken  orgy,  destroyed  —  only  frag- 
ments of  the  fargards  remain.  These 
tell  of  creation,  effected  in  six  epochs,  and 
of  a  pairi-daeza. 

Delitzsch  voluminously  asked:  Wo  lag 
das  Parodies?  There  it  is.  There  is 
the  primal  paradise.  In  it  Ormuzd  put 
Mashya,  the  first  man,  and  Mashyana, 
the  first  woman,  whom  Ahriman,  in  the 
form  of  a  serpent,  seduced.  Thereafter 
ensued  the  struggle  in  which  all  have  or 
will  participate,  one  that,  extending  be- 
yond the  limits  of  the  visible  world, 
arrays  seasons  and  spirits  and  the  senses 
of  man  in  a  conflict  of  good  and  evil  that 
can  end  only  when,  from  the  depths  of 
the  dawn,  radiant  in  the  vermillion  sky, 
Coshyos,  hero  of  the  resurrection,  trium- 
phantly appears. 

[49] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

The  parallel  between  this  romance  and 
subsequent  poetry  is  curious.  In  Chal- 
dea,  before  the  fargards  were,  the  story 
of  Creation,  of  Eden,  and  of  the  fall  had 
been  told.  In  Egypt,  before  the  Avesta 
was  written,  the  resurrection  and  the 
life  were  known.  Similar  legends  and 
prospects  may  or  may  not  represent  an 
autonomous  development  of  Iranian 
thought.  The  successors  of  the  problem- 
atic Zarathrustra,  the  line  of  magi  who 
wrote  and  taught  in  his  name,  may  have 
gathered  the  tales  and  theories  elsewhere. 
In  the  creed  which  they  instituted  there 
is  a  trinity.  India  had  one,  Egypt  an- 
other, Babylonia  a  third.  Babylonia  had 
even  three  of  them.  But  in  Mithra,  Iran 
had  a  redeemer  that  no  other  creed 
possessed.  In  Coshyos  was  a  saviour, 
virgin  born,  who  nowhere  else  was  imag- 
ined. In  Mara,  Buddhism  had  a  Satan. 
[50] 


ORMUZD 

The  Persian  Ahriman  is  Satan  himself. 
Babylon  had  angels  and  cherubs.  In 
Iran  there  were  guardian  angels,  there 
were  archangels  with  flaming  swords, 
there  were  fairies,  there  were  goblins,  the 
celestial,  the  poetic,  the  demoniac  com- 
bined. Zoroasterism  may  or  may  not 
have  had  a  past,  it  is  perhaps  evident 
that  it  had  a  future. 

An  inscription  chiselled  in  the  red 
granite  of  Ekbatana  describes  Ormuzd 
as  creator  of  heaven  and  earth.  In  the 
Veda  the  description  of  Indra  is  identical.1 
It  was  applied  equally  to  Jahveh  in  Judea. 
But  above  Jahveh,  Kabbalists  discerned 
En  Soph.  Above  Indra  metaphysicians 
discovered  Brahma.  Similarly  the  Per- 
sian magi  found  that  Ormuzd,  however 
perfect,  was  not  perfect  enough  and,  from 
the  depths  of  the  ideal,  they  disclosed 

1 R.  V.  x.  3.    "Indra  created  heaven  and  earth." 
[51] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

Zervan  Akerene,  the  Eternal,  from  whom 
all  things  come  and  to  whom  all  return. 

That  conception  is  not  reached  in  the 
Avesta.  It  is  in  the  Bundahish,  a  work 
which,  while  much  later,  is  based  on 
earlier  traditions,  memories  it  may  be, 
of  antediluvian  legends  brought  from  the 
summits  of  upper  Asia  by  Djemschid, 
the  fabulous  Abraham  of  the  Persians  of 
whom  Zarathrustra  was  the  Moses.  But 
in  default  of  the  Eternal,  the  Avesta  con- 
tains pictures  of  enduring  charm 

Among  these  is  a  highly  poetic  pastel 
that  displays  the  soul  of  man  surprised 
in  the  first  post-mortem  ambuscades. 
There  a  figure,  beautiful  or  revolting, 
cries  at  him:  "I  am  thyself,  the  image  of 
thine  earthly  life." 

If  that  life  has  been  beautiful,  the  soul 
of  man,  led  by  itself,  is  conducted  to 
heaven.  Otherwise,  led  still  by  itself,  it 
[52] 


ORMUZD 

descended  to  Drujo-demana,  the  House 
of  Destruction,  where,  fed  on  insults  and 
offal,  it  waited  till  its  sins  were  destroyed. 
The  waiting  might  be  long.  It  was  not 
everlasting.  There  was  Mithra  to  inter- 
cede. Besides,  evil  was  regarded  but  as 
a  shadow  on  the  surface  of  things.  In 
the  seventh  epoch  of  creation,  a  period 
yet  to  be,  the  age  which  Coshyos  is  to 
usher,  the  shadow  will  fade.  The  wicked, 
purified  of  their  wickedness,  will  be  re- 
ceived among  the  blessed.  Even  Ahri- 
man  is  to  be  converted.  In  that  definite 
triumph  of  light  over  darkness  is  the 
resurrection  and  the  life,  life  in  Garo- 
demana,  literally  House  of  Hymns,  a  pre- 
Christian  heaven,  yet  strictly  Christian, 
where,  to  the  trumpetings  of  angels, 
hosannahs  are  ceaselessly  sung.1 

John  —  or,  more  exactly,  his  homonym 

1  Yasht.  xxviii.  10,  xxxiv.  2. 
[53] 


THE  LORDS  OP  THE  GHOSTLAND 

—  was  perhaps  acquainted  with  that 
idea,  as  he  may  have  been  with  other 
theories  that  the  Avesta  contains.  But 
the  possibility  is  a  detail.  It  is  the  idea 
that  counts.  Behind  it  is  the  unique 
character  of  this  doctrine  which,  in  elimi- 
nating evil,  converted  even  Satan. 

Satan  seldom  gets  his  due.  He  was 
the  first  artist  and  has  remained  the 
greatest.  In  creating  evil  he  fashioned 
what  is  a  luxury  and  a  necessity  combined. 
Evil  is  the  counterpart  of  excellence. 
Both  have  their  roots  in  nature.  One 
could  not  be  destroyed  without  the  other. 
For  every  form  of  evil  there  is  a  cor- 
responding form  of  good.  Virtue  would 
be  meaningless  were  it  not  for  vice. 
Honour  would  have  no  nobility  were  it 
not  for  shame.  If  ever  evil  be  banished 
from  the  scheme  of  things,  life  could 
have  no  savour  and  joy  no  delight. 

[54] 


ORMUZD 

Happiness    and   unhappiness   would    be 
synonymous  terms. 

It  is  for  this  reason  that  scoffers  have 
mocked  at  heaven.  Heaven  may  be  very 
different  from  what  has  been  fancied. 
But  the  theory  of  it,  however  unphilo- 
sophic,  which  Zoroasterism  supplied, 
carried  with  it  a  creed  not  of  tears  but  of 
smiles,  a  religion  of  lofty  tolerance,  one  in 
which  the  demonology  barely  alarmed, 
for  redemption  was  assured,  and  so  fully 
that  on  earth  melancholy  was  accounted 
a  folly. 

Though  tolerant,  it  could  be  austere. 
Meanness,  thanklessness,  loquaciousness, 
jealousy,  an  unbecoming  attire,  evil 
thoughts,  whatever  is  sensual,  whatever 
is  coarse,  any  promenade  in  mud  actual 
or  metaphorical,  severely  it  condemned. 
Particularly  was  avarice  censured.  "There 
are  many  who  do  not  like  to  give,"  Ormuzd, 
[55] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

in  the  Vendidad,  confided  to  Zarathrustra. 
The  high  god  added:  "Ahriman  awaits 
them." 

Ahriman  awaited  also  the  harlot  who, 
elsewhere,  at  that  period,  was  holy.  Yet 
in  lapses,  confession  and  repentance  suf- 
ficed for  remission,  provided  that  in  pray- 
ing for  forgiveness  the  sinner  forgave 
those  that  had  sinned  against  him.  If  he 
lacked  the  time,  were  he  dying,  a  priest 
might  yet  save  him  with  words  whispered 
in  the  ear.  That  was  the  extreme  unc- 
tion, hardly  administrable,  however,  in 
case  of  wilful  omission  of  the  darun,  which 
was  communion. 

This  sacrament,  the  most  mystic  of  the 
Church,  was  observed  by  the  Incas,  who 
also  confessed,  also  atoned,  who,  like  the 
Buddhists,  were  baptized,  but  who,  like 
the  Persians,  worshipped  the  sun  and, 
with  perhaps  a  finer  instinct  of  what  the 
[56] 


ORMUZD 

beautiful   truly   is,   worshipped   too   the 
rainbow.1 

Huraken,  the  winged  and  feathered 
serpent-god  of  the  Toltecs,  was  adored 
in  temples  that  upheld  a  cross.  The 
Incas  lacked  that  symbol.  But  they 
had  a  Satan.  They  had  also  the  ex- 
pectation of  a  saviour,  belief  in  whom 
could  alone  have  consoled  for  the  ad- 
vent of  Pizarro.  Over  what  highways 
of  sea  or  sky,  the  living  Word,  which 
Ormuzd  spoke,  reached  them,  there 
has  been  no  somnambulist  of  history  to 
divine.  But  in  the  splendour  that  Cuzco 
was,  in  the  golden  temples  of  the  town  of 
gold,  along  the  scarlet  lanes  where  sacred 
peacocks  strolled  and  girls  more  sacred 
still  —  vestals  whom  Pizarro 's  soldiers 
raped  —  in  that  City  of  the  Sun,  the  Word 
re-echoed.  The  mystery  of  it,  reported 

1  Garcilasso :  Commentaries  reales. 
[57] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

back  to  the  Holy  Office,  was  declared  an 
artifice  of  the  devil. 

Less  mysteriously,  through  the  obvious 
vehicle  of  cognate  speech,  it  reached  the 
Norse,  stirred  the  scalds,  who  repeated 
it  in  the  Eddie  sagas.  Loki  and  his  in- 
inferior  fiends  are,  as  there  represented, 
quite  as  black  as  Ahriman  and  his  cohorts. 
The  conflict  of  good  and  evil  is  almost  as 
fully  dire.  But  Odin  is  a  colourless  re- 
flection of  Ormuzd.  The  sesir,  the  angels 
of  the  Scandinavian  sky,  are  paler  than 
the  izeds.  The  figure  of  Baldr,  the  re- 
deemer, faints  beside  that  of  Mithra. 
Valhalla,  though  perhaps  less  fatiguing 
than  Garo-demana,  was  more  trite  in 
its  wassails  than  the  latter  in  its  hymns. 

What   these   abstractions   lacked   was 

not  the  Logos  but  the  light.     However 

brilliantly  the  Iranian  sun  might  glow, 

in  the  sullen  north  its  rays  were  lost.     The 

[58] 


ORMUZD 

mists,  obscuring  it,  made  Valhalla  dim 
and  set  the  gods  in  twilight.  It  stirred 
the  scalds  to  runes  but  not  to  inspiration. 
There  is  none  in  the  Eddas.  Nor  was 
there  any  in  the  Nibelungen*  until  the 
light,  almost  extinct,  burst  suddenly  in 
the  flaming  scores  of  Wagner. 

Transformed  by  ages  and  by  man,  yet 
lifted  at  last  from  their  secular  slumber, 
the  Persian  myths  achieved  there  their 
Occidental  apotheosis,  and,  it  may  be,  on 
steps  of  song,  mounted  to  the  ideal  where 
Zervan  Akerene  muses. 


[59] 


I 


Ill 

AMON-RA 

AM  all  that  is,  has  been  and  shall  be. 

No  mortal  has  lifted  my  veil." 
That  pronouncement,  graven  on  the 
statue  of  Isis,  confounded  Egypt,  con- 
demning her  mysteriously  for  some  sin, 
anterior  and  unknown,  to  ignorance  of 
the  divine,  leaving  her,  in  default  of  reve- 
lation, to  worship  what  she  would,  jackals, 
hyenas,  cats,  hawks,  the  ibis;  beasts  and 
birds.  Yet  to  the  people,  whose  minds 
were  as  naked  as  their  bodies,  and  who, 
in  addition,  were  slaves,  there  must  have 
been  something  very  superior  in  the  lords 
of  the  desert  and  the  air.  Obviously 
they  were  wise.  Among  them  were  some 
[60] 


AMON-RA 

that  knew  in  advance  the  change  of  the 
seasons.  Others,  indifferent  to  man  and 
independent  of  him,  migrated  over  high- 
ways known  but  to  them.  The  senses  of 
all  were  keyed  to  vibrations.  They  heard 
the  inaudible,  saw  the  invisible,  and, 
though  they  had  a  language  of  their  own, 
when  questioned  never  replied.  To  slaves, 
clearly  they  were  gods. 

Not  to  the  priests,  however.  They 
knew  better.  They  but  affected  belief 
in  divinities  that  had  perhaps  emigrated 
from  the  enigmas  of  geography  and  who 
were  polychrome  as  the  skies  they  had 
crossed.  Fashioned  in  stone,  these  gods 
were  dog-headed  or  longly  beaked.  Some, 
though,  were  alive.  In  temples  were 
saurians  on  purple  carpets,  bulls  draped 
with  spangled  shawls,  hawks  on  shimmer- 
ing perches,  that  little  gold  chains  de- 
tained. Among  gods  of  this  character, 
[61] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

the  Sphinx,  in  its  role  of  eternal  spectre, 
must  have  seemed  the  ideal.  Others 
were  nearly  sublime.  Particularly  there 
was  Ausar. 

Ausar,  called  commonly  Osiris,  died  for 
man.  In  an  attempt  to  preserve  har- 
mony, in  a  struggle  with  the  real  spirit 
of  actual  evil  which  discord  is,  Osiris  was 
slain.  Being  a  god  he  arose  from  the 
dead.  The  latter  thereafter  he  judged. 

The  people  knew  little,  if  anything, 
concerning  him.  They  knew  little  if 
anything  at  all.  They  had  a  menagerie 
and  a  full  consciousness  of  their  own  in- 
significance. That  sufficed.  In  all  of 
carnal  Africa,  the  priest  alone  possessed 
what  then  was  truth  and  of  which  a  part 
is  theology  now. 

Egypt,  in  which  the  evangels  began, 
millennia  before  they  were  written,  knew 
no  genesis.  Her  history,  sculptured  in 
[62] 


AMON-RA 

hieroglyphics,  was  cut  on  pages  of  stone. 
It  awoke  in  the  falling  of  cataracts.  It 
ended  with  simoons  in  sand.  The  books 
that  tell  of  it  are  pyramids,  obelisks, 
necropoles;  constructions  colossal  and 
enigmatic;  the  granite  epitaphs  of  finite 
things.  To-day,  in  the  shattered  temples, 
from  which  all  other  gods  are  gone,  one 
divinity  still  lingers.  It  is  Silence. 

In  Iran  sorrow  was  a  folly.  In  Egypt 
speech  was  a  sin.  Apis  could  bellow, 
Anubis  bark;  man  might  not  even  stutter. 
It  was  in  the  submission  of  dumb  obedi- 
ence that  the  palpable  eternities  of  the 
pyramids  were  piled.  Yet  in  that  dark- 
ness was  light,  in  silence  was  the  Word. 
But  to  behold  and  to  hear  was  possible 
only  in  sanctuaries  reserved  to  the  elect. 
The  gods  too  had  their  castes.  The 
lowest  only  were  fellahin  fit  to  worship. 
On  the  lips  of  the  others  the  priests  held 
[63] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

always  a  finger.  Crocodiles  were  less 
distant,  hyenas  more  approachable,  and 
the  Egyptian,  barred  from  the  divine, 
found  it  on  earth.  He  prayed  to  scor- 
pions, sang  hymns  to  scarabs,  coaxed  the 
jackal  with  psalms;  with  dances  he  pla- 
cated the  ibis.  It  was  ridiculous  but 
human.  He  too  would  have  a  part, 
however  insensate,  in  the  dreams  of  all 
mankind. 

Yet,  had  he  looked  not  down  but  up, 
he  would  have  lifted  at  least  a  fringe  of 
the  Isian  veil.  The  sun,  taken  as  a  sym- 
bol only,  the  symbol  of  life,  death,  and 
resurrection  —  phases  which  its  rising, 
setting,  and  return  suggest  —  was  the 
deity,  the  one  really  existing  god.  Nomi- 
inally,  figuratively,  even  concretely,  there 
were  others;  a  whole  host,  a  hierarchy 
vaster  than  the  Aryans  knew;  a  great 
crowd  of  divinities  less  grandiose  than 
[64] 


AMON-RA 

gaudy,  that  swarmed  in  space,  strolled 
through  the  dawns  and  dusk,  thronged 
the  temples,  eyed  the  quick,  confronted 
the  dead.  They  were  but  appearances, 
mere  masks,  expressions,  hypostases, 
eidolons  of  Ra. 

Ra  was  the  celestial  pharaoh.  But  not 
originally.  Originally  he  was  part  of  a 
triad  which  itself  was  part  of  a  triple 
trinity.  Ra  then  was  but  one  divinity 
among  many  gods.  These  ultimately  lost 
themselves  in  him  so  indistinguishably 
that  there  are  litanies  in  which  the  names 
of  seventy-five  of  them  are  used  in  address- 
ing him.  Regarded  as  the  unbegotten  be- 
getter of  the  first  beginning,  he  succeeded 
in  achieving  the  incomprehensible.  He 
became  triune  and  remained  unique.  He 
was  Osiris,  he  was  Isis,  he  was  Horus. 
At  once  father,  mother,  and  son,  he  fecun- 
dated, conceived,  produced,  and  was. 
[65] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

From  him  gods  and  goddesses  ema- 
nated in  siderial  fireworks  that  illuminated 
the  heavens,  dazzled  the  earth,  then 
melted  into  each  other,  faded  away  or, 
occasionally,  flared  afresh  in  a  glare  dis- 
pelling and  persistent.  Among  these 
latter  was  Amon.  Glimmering  primarily 
in  provincial  obscurity  at  Thebes,  the 
thin  fire  of  his  shrine  mounted  spirally 
to  Ra,  fused  its  flames  with  his,  expand- 
ing and  uniting  so  inseparably  with  them, 
that  the  two  became  one.  Amon  means 
hidden;  Amon-Ra,  the  hidden  light. 

In  the  infinite,  time  is  not.  In  heaven 
there  is  no  chronology.  The  date  of  any 
god's  accession  to  supremacy  there  is, 
consequently,  apart  from  mortal  ken. 
None  the  less  that  of  Amon-Ra  is  known. 
At  the  beginning  of  the  earthly  reign  of 
Amonhoteph  III.,  an  edict,  scrupulously 
executed  throughout  Egypt,  determined, 
[66] 


AMON-RA 

on  monument  and  wall,  the  substitution  of 
Amon-Ra's  name  for  that  of  previously 
superior  gods. 

The  pharaohnate  of  Amonhoteph  be- 
gan about  1500  B.C.  It  is  from  that 
period,  therefore,  that  dates  the  divinity's 
accession  to  the  pharaohnate  of  the  skies. 
There  is,  or  should  be,  a  reason  for  all 
things.  There  is  one  for  that.  Amon- 
hoteph regarded  himself  as  Amon's  son. 
It  was  one  of  the  traits  of  the  pharaohs, 
as  it  was  also  of  the  Incas,  to  believe,  or 
at  least  to  assert,  that  their  fathers,  there- 
fore themselves,  were  divine.  As  a  con- 
sequence of  the  idea  they  prayed  to  their 
own  images  and  likened  their  palaces  to 
inns. 

Originally  foreigners,  invaders  from 
Akkad  or  Sumer,  the  pharaohs  first  con- 
quered, then  surprised.  It  was  they  that 
embanked  the  Nile,  turned  morasses  into 
[67] 


THE   LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

meadows  and  piled  the  pyramids.  More 
exactly,  it  was  by  their  commands  that 
these  miracles  were  contrived.  To  the 
neolithic  people  whom  they  subjugated 
their  divinity  was  clear.  So  elsewhere 
was  that  of  the  kings  of  Akkad.  Like 
them,  like  the  Incas,  the  pharaohs  were 
of  the  solar  race  and  so  remained  from 
the  first  dynasty  to  the  Greek  conquest, 
when  Alexander,  to  legitimatize  his  sover- 
eignty, had  himself  acknowledged  as 
Amon's  son. 

The  ceremony  had  its  precedents.  An 
inscription  in  eulogy  of  the  great  Rameses 
states  that  Amon,  when  possessing  the 
pharaohs  august  mother,  engendered  him 
as  a  god.  On  a  wall  of  the  Temple  of 
Luxor  an  earlier  inscription  sets  forth 
that  the  god  of  Thebes,  incarnating  him- 
self in  the  person  of  Thotmes  IV.,  ap- 
peared in  his  divine  form  to  the  pharaoh's 
[68] 


AMON-RA 

queen,  who,  at  sight  of  his  beauty,  con- 
ceived. 

It  was  therefore  not  in  the  beast  alone, 
but  in  man,  that  divinity  revealed  itself 
in  Egpyt.  That  in  Judea  a  similar  reve- 
lation should  have  been  withheld  until 
after  the  Roman  occupation  is  hardly 
explicable  on  the  theory,  general  among 
scholars,  that  Moses  is  not  a  historical 
character,  for  an  identical  revelation  had 
been  received  in  Babylonia  where  Israel 
twice  loitered.  Moreover,  a  curious  paral- 
lelism exists  between  post-Mosaic  prophecy 
and  Egyptian  clairvoyance.  In  a  papy- 
rus of  the  Thotmes  III.  epoch  —  about 
1600  B.C. — it  is  written:  "The  people 
of  the  age  of  the  son  of  man  shall  rejoice 
and  establish  his  name  forever.  They 
shall  be  removed  from  evil  and  the 
wicked  shall  humble  their  mouths.'*  In 
commenting  the  passage  an  Egyptologist 
[69] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

noted  that  the  words  son  of  man  are  a 
literal  translation  of  the  original  si-n-sa.1 
But  already  in  Akkad  a  similar  prophecy 
had  been  uttered.2  It  may  be,  therefore, 
that  it  was  in  Babylon  that  Israel  first 
heard  it. 

The  doctrine  of  a  trinity,  common 
to  almost  all  antique  beliefs,  was  a 
blasphemy  to  the  Jews.  The  belief  in  im- 
mortality, also  prevalent,  though  less  gen- 
eral, was  to  them  an  abomination.  The 
miracle  of  divine  descent  they  were  per- 
haps too  practical  to  accept.  There  was 
no  room  in  their  creed  for  the  dogma  of 
future  rewards  and  punishments,  and  that, 
together  with  other  articles  of  the  Chris- 
tian faith,  Egypt's  elect  professed. 

The  slaves  and  mongrels  that  consti- 
tuted the  bulk  of  the  population  were  not 

1  Sayce:  Guifford  Lectures. 

2  Jastrow :  The  Dibbara  Epic. 

[70] 


AMON-RA 

instructed  in  these  things  and  would  not 
have  understood  them  if  they  had  been. 
In  Babylonia  education  was  compulsory. 
In  Egypt  it  was  an  art,  a  gift,  mysterious 
in  itself,  reserved  to  the  few.  To  the 
Egyptian,  religion  consisted  in  paraded 
symbols,  in  avenues  of  sphinxes,  in  forests 
of  obelisks,  in  pharaohs  seated  colossally 
before  the  temple  doors,  in  inscriptions  that 
told  indistinguishably  of  theomorphic  men 
and  anthropomorphic  gods,  and  in  a  belief 
in  the  divinity  of  bulls  and  hawks. 

These  latter  had  their  uses.  In  trans- 
formations elsewhere  effected,  the  sacred 
bull  may  have  become  a  golden  calf,  the 
golden  hawk  a  sacred  dove.  In  Egypt 
they  were  otherwise  serviceable.  The 
worship  of  them,  of  other  birds  and  beasts, 
of  insects  and  vipers  as  well,  ecclesiasti- 
cally indorsed,  hid  the  myth  of  metemp- 
sychosis. 

[71] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

Of  that  the  people  knew  nothing. 
When  they  died  they  ceased  to  be.  Even 
mummification,  usually  supposed  to  have 
been  general,  was  not  for  them.  Down 
to  an  epoch  relatively  late  it  was  a  privi- 
lege reserved  to  priests  and  princes. 
When  the  commonalty  were  embalmed 
it  was  with  the  opulent  design  that,  in  a 
future  existence,  they  should  serve  their 
masters  as  they  had  in  this.  Embalming 
was  a  preparation  for  the  Judgment  Day. 
Of  that  the  people  knew  nothing  either. 
It  was  even  unlawful  that  concerning  it 
they  should  be  apprised. 

In  the  Louvre  is  a  statue  of  Ptah-meh, 
high  priest  of  Memphis.  On  it  are  the 
significant  words:  "Nothing  was  hidden 
from  him."  A  passage  of  Zosimus  states 
that  what  was  hidden  it  was  illicit  to  re- 
veal, except,  Jamblicus  explained,  to 
those  whose  discretion  a  long  novitiate 
[72] 


AMON-RA 

had  assured.  To  such  only  was  dis- 
closed the  secret  that  life  is  death  in  a 
land  of  darkness,  and  death  is  life  in  a 
land  of  light. 

It  was  because  of  this  that  the  pharaohs 
seated  themselves  colossally  before  the 
temple  doors.  It  was  because  of  it  that 
their  palaces  were  inns  and  their  tombs 
were  homes.  It  was  because  of  it  that 
their  sepulchres  were  built  for  eternity 
and  the  tenements  of  their  souls  placed 
there  embalmed.  It  was  because  of  this 
that  the  triumphs  of  men  were  inscribed 
in  the  halls  of  the  gods.  Instead  of  seek- 
ing to  be  absorbed,  it  was  their  own  in- 
extinguishable individuality  that  they 
endeavoured  to  assert.  Tombs,  tenements, 
triumphs,  these  all  were  preparations  for 
the  Land  of  Light. 

The  land  was  Alu,  the  asphodel  mead- 
ows of  the  celestial  Nile  that  wound 
[73] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

through  the  Milky  Way.  To  reach  it  a 
passport,  vise*'d  by  Osiris,  sufficed.  The 
first  draft  of  that  passport  was  held  to 
have  been  written  on  tablets  of  alabaster, 
in  letters  of  lapis  lazuli,  by  an  eidolon  of 
Ra,  who,  known  in  Egypt  as  Thoth,  else- 
where was  Hermes  Thrice  the  Greatest. 

At  Memphis,  Hermes  was  regarded  as 
representing  the  personification  of  divine 
wisdom,  or,  more  exactly  perhaps,  the 
inventive  power  of  the  human  mind.  A 
little  library  of  forty-two  books  —  which 
a  patricist  saw,  but  not  being  initiate 
could  not  read  —  was  attributed  to  him.1 
The  books  contained  the  entire  hieratic 
belief.  Fragments  that  are  held  to  have 
survived  in  an  extant  Greek  novel  are 
obviously  Egyptian,  but  as  obviously 
Alexandrine  and  neo-platonic.  In  the 
editw  princeps  Pheidias  is  mentioned. 

1  Clemens  Alexandrines :  Stromata  vi. 
[74] 


AMON-RA 

Mention  of  Michel  Angelo  would  have 
been  less  anachronistic.  The  original 
books  are  gone,  all  of  them,  forever,  per- 
haps, save  one,  chapters  of  which  are  as 
old  as  the  fourth  dynasty  and,  it  may  be, 
are  still  older.  Pyramid  texts  of  the 
fifth  dynasty  show  that  there  then  existed 
what  to-day  is  termed  The  Book  of  the 
Dead,  a  copy  of  which,  put  in  a  mummy's 
arms,  was  a  talisman  for  the  soul  in  the 
Court  of  Amenti,  a  passport  thence  to 
the  Land  of  Light. 

"There  is  no  book  like  it,  man  hath 
not  spoken  it,  earth  hath  not  heard  it"  — 
very  truthfully  it  recites  of  itself.  One 
copy,  known  as  the  Louvre  Papyrus, 
presents  the  Divine  Comedy,  as  primarily 
conceived  and  illustrated  by  an  archaic 
Dore.  Text  and  vignettes  display  the 
tribunal  where  the  souls  of  the  dead  are 
judged. 

[751 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

In  the  foreground  is  an  altar.  Adja- 
cent is  a  figure,  half  griffon,  half  chimera, 
the  Beast  of  Amenti,  perhaps  too  of  the 
Apocalypse.  Beyond,  an  ape  poises  a 
pair  of  scales.  For  balance  is  an  ostrich 
feather.  Above  are  the  spirits  of  fate. 
At  the  left  Osiris  is  enthroned.  From  a 
balcony  his  assessors  lean.  At  the  right 
is  the  entrance.  There  the  disembodied, 
ushered  by  Truth,  appears  and,  in  hom- 
ages and  genuflections,  affirms  negatively 
the  decalogue;  protesting  before  the 
Master  of  Eternity  that  there  is  no  evil 
in  him;  praying  the  dwellers  in  Amenti 
that  he  may  cross  the  dark  way;  declar- 
ing to  each  that  he  has  not  committed 
the  particular  sin  over  which  they  preside. 

"O  Eater  of  Spirits  gone  out  of  the 

windows    of    Alu!    O    Master    of    the 

Faces!"  he  variously  calls.     "O  the  One 

who   associates   the   Splendours!   O   the 

[76] 


AMON-RA 

Glowing  Feet  gone  out  of  the  Night!  I 
did  not  lie.  I  did  not  kill.  I  have  not 
been  anxious.  I  did  not  talk  abundantly. 
I  made  no  one  weep.  No  heart  have  I 
harmed." 

The  assessors  listen.  "  I  have  not  been 
anxious.  I  made  no  one  weep.  No  heart 
have  I  harmed."  These  abstentions, 
graces  now,  were  virtues  then,  and  so 
efficacious  that  they  perhaps  sufficed,  as 
rightly  they  should,  for  absolution. 

But  while  the  assessors  listen  and 
Osiris  looks  gravely  on,  no  one  accuses. 
It  is  conscience  in  its  nakedness,  con- 
science exposed  there  where  all  may  see 
it,  where  for  the  first  time  perhaps  it  truly 
sees  itself,  and  seeing  realizes  what  there 
is  in  it  of  evil  and  what  of  good,  it  is  that 
which  protests. 

Still   the   assessors   listen.     Orthodoxy 
on  the  part  of  the  respondent  is  to  them 
[77] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

a  minor  thing.  What  they  require  is 
that  he  shall  have  been  merciful  to  his 
fellow  creatures,  true  to  himself.  Only 
when  it  is  proven  that  he  has  done  his 
duty  to  man,  is  he  permitted  to  show  that 
he  has  done  his  duty  to  gods. 

The  appeal  continues:  "I  fed  the  hun- 
gry, clothed  the  naked,  I  gave  water  to 
them  that  thirsted.  O  ye  that  dwell  in 
Amenti!  I  am  unpolluted,  I  am  pure." 

But  is  it  true?  The  scales  decide. 
The  heart  of  the  respondent  is  weighed. 
If  heavy,  out  it  is  cast  to  pass  with  him 
again  through  life's  infernal  circles.  But, 
if  light  as  the  feather  in  the  balance  and 
therefore  equal  with  truth,  it  is  restored 
to  the  body,  which  then  resurrects  and, 
in  the  bark  of  the  Sun,  sails  the  celestial 
Nile  to  Ra  and  the  Land  of  Light. 

That  singer  gone  out  of  Amenti,  actu- 
ally, like  Osiris,  rose  from  the  dead.  The 
[78] 


AMON-RA 

picture  which  a  papyrus  forty  centuries 
old  presents,  is  the  dream  of  a  vision  that 
Michel  Angelo  displayed,  a  sketch  for  a 
papal  fresco.  Such  indeed  was  the  con- 
formity between  the  underlying  concep- 
tions, that,  at  almost  the  first  monition, 
Isis,  whose  veil  no  mortal  had  raised, 
lifted  it  from  her  black  breast  and  suckled 
there  the  infant  Jesus.  Then,  presently, 
in  temples  that  had  teemed,  the  silence 
of  the  desert  brooded.  The  tide  of  life 
retreated,  an  entire  theogony  vanished, 
exorcised,  both  of  them,  by  the  sign  of 
the  cross. 

At  sight  of  the  unimagined  emblem,  a 
priesthood  who  in  secret  sanctuaries  had 
evolved  nearly  all  but  that,  flung  them- 
selves into  crypts  beneath,  pulled  the 
walls  down  after  them,  burying  unem- 
balmed  the  arcana  of  a  creed  whose 
spirit  still  is  immortal. 
[79] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

In  Egypt,  then,  only  tombs  and  ne- 
cropoles  survived.  But  it  is  legendary 
that,  in  the  solitudes  of  the  Thebaid, 
dispossessed  eidolons  of  Ra,  appearing  in 
the  shape  of  chimeras,  terrified  ancho- 
rites, to  whom,  with  vengeful  eyes,  they 
indicated  their  ruined  altars. 


[80] 


IV 

BEL-MARDUK 

THE  inscriptions  of  Assyrian  kings 
have,  many  of  them,  the  monotony 
of  hell.  Made  of  boasts  and  shrieks, 
they  recite  the  capture  and  sack  of  cities; 
the  torrents  of  blood  with  which,  like 
wool,  the  streets  were  dyed;  the  flaming 
pyramids  of  prisoners;  the  groans  of  men 
impaled;  the  cries  of  ravished  women. 

The  inscriptions  are  not  all  infernal. 
Those  that  relate  to  Assurbanipal  —  vul- 
garly, Sandanapallos,  —  are  even  ornate. 
But  Assurbanipal,  while  probably  fiend- 
ish and  certainly  crapulous,  was  clearly 
literary  besides.  From  the  spoil  of  sacked 
cities  this  bibliofilou  took  libraries,  the 
[81] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

myths  and  epics  of  creation,  sacred  texts 
from  Eridu  and  Ur,  volumes  in  the  ex- 
tinct tongues  of  Akkad  and  Sumer,  first 
editions  of  the  Book  of  God. 

These,  re-edited  in  cuneiform  and  kept 
conveniently  on  the  second  floor  of  his 
palace,  fell  with  Nineveh,  where,  until 
recently  recovered,  for  millennia  they 
lay.  Additionally,  from  shelves  set  up 
in  the  days  of  Khammurabi  —  the  Am- 
raphel  of  Genesis  —  Nippur  has  yielded 
ghostly  tablets  and  Borsippa  treasuries  of 
Babylonian  ken. 

These,  the  eldest  revelations  of  the 
divine,  are  the  last  that  man  has  deci- 
phered. The  altars  and  people  that 
heard  them  first,  the  marble  temples,  the 
ivory  palaces,  the  murderous  throngs, 
are  dust.  The  entire  civilization  from 
which  they  came  has  vanished.  Yet, 
traced  with  a  wooden  reed  on  squares  of 
[82] 


BEI^MARDUK 

clay,  are  flights  of  little  arrows,  from 
which,  magically,  it  all  returns.  Miracu- 
lously with  these  books  a  world  revives. 
Fashioned,  some  of  them,  at  an  epoch 
that  in  biblical  chronology  is  anterior  to 
man,  they  tell  of  creation,  of  the  serpent, 
the  fall  and  the  deluge.  At  the  gates 
of  paradise  you  see  man  dying,  poisoned 
by  the  tree  of  life.  Before  Genesis  was, 
already  it  had  been  written. 

In  the  Chaldean  Book  of  the  Beginnings 
creation  was  effected  in  successive  acts. 
According  to  the  epic  of  it,  humanity's 
primal  home  was  a  paradise  where  ten 
impressive  persons — the  models,  it  maybe, 
of  antediluvian  patriarchs  —  reigned  in- 
terminably, agreeably  also,  finally  sin- 
fully as  well.  In  punishment  a  deluge 
swept  them  away.  From  the  flood  there 
escaped  one  man  who  separated  a  mythi- 
cal from  an  heroic  age.  In  the  latter 
[83] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

epoch,  beings  descended  from  demons 
built  Nineveh  and  Babylon;  organized 
human  existence;  invented  arithmetic, 
geometry,  astronomy  and  the  calendar; 
counted  the  planets;  numbered  the  days 
of  the  year,  divided  them  into  months  and 
weeks ;  established  the  Sabbath ;  decorated 
the  skies  with  the  signs  of  the  zodiac,  in- 
stituting, in  the  interim,  colleges  of  sa- 
vants and  priests.  These  speculated  on 
the  origin  of  things,  attributed  it  to  spon- 
taneous generation,  the  descent  of  man 
to  evolution,  entertaining  the  vulgar  mean- 
while with  tales  of  gods  and  ghosts.1 

The  cosmological  texts  now  available 
were  not  written  then.  They  are  drawn 
from  others  that  were.  But  there  is  a 
vignette  that  probably  is  of  that  age.  It 
represents  a  man  and  a  woman  stretching 

1  Lenormant:  Les  Origines.  Schroder:  Die  Keilen- 
schriften.  Smith:  Chaldean  Genesis. 

[84] 


BEL-MARDUK 

their  hands  to  a  tree.  Behind  the  woman 
writhes  a  snake.  The  tree,  known  as  the 
holy  cedar  of  Eridu,  the  fruit  of  which 
stimulated  desire,  is  described  in  an  epic 
that  recites  the  adventures  of  Gilgames. 

Gilgames  was  the  national  hero  of 
Chaldea.  The  story  of  his  loves  with 
Ishtar  is  repeated  in  the  Samson  and 
Delilah  myth.  Ishtar,  described  in  an 
Assyrian  inscription  as  Our  Lady  of 
Girdles,  was  the  original  Venus,  as  Gil- 
games  was  perhaps  the  prototype  of 
Hercules.  The  legend  of  his  labours  is 
represented  on  a  seal  of  Sargon  of 
Akkad,  a  king  who  ruled  fifty-seven  hun- 
dred years  ago. 

In  the  epic,  Gilgames,  betrayed  by 
Ishtar,  tried  to  find  out  how  not  to  die. 
In  trying  he  reached  a  garden,  guarded  by 
cherubim,  where  the  holy  cedar  was. 
There  he  learned  that  one  being  only  could 
[85] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

teach  him  to  be  immortal,  and  that  being, 
Adra-Khasis,  had  been  translated  to  the 
Land  of  the  Silver  Sky.  Adra-Khasis,  was 
the  Chaldean  Noah.  Gilgames  sought 
him  and  the  story  of  the  deluge  follows. 
But  with  a  difference.  On  the  seventh 
day,  Adra-Khasis  released  from  his  ark  a 
dove  that  returned,  finally  a  raven  that 
did  not.  Then  he  looked  out,  and  look- 
ing, shrieked.  Every  one  had  perished. 

Noah  was  less  emotional,  or,  if  equally 
compassionate,  the  fact  is  not  recited. 
Apart  from  that  detail  and  one  other,  the 
story  of  the  flood  is  common  to  all  folklore. 
Even  the  Aztecs  knew  of  it.  Probably  it 
originated  in  the  matrix  of  nations  which 
the  table-land  of  Asia  was.  But  only  in 
Chaldean  myth,  and  subsequently  in  He- 
brew legend,  was  the  flood  ascribed  to  sin. 

Gilgames'  quest,  meanwhile,  could  not 
have  been  wholly  vain.  In  an  archaic 
[86] 


BEL-MARDUK 

inscription  it  is  stated  that  the  city  of 
Erech  was  built  in  olden  times  by  the 
deified  Gilgames.1 

How  old  the  olden  times  may  have 
been  is  conjectural.  Modern  science  has 
put  the  advent  of  man  sixty  million  years 
ago.  Chaldean  chronology  is  less  spa- 
scious.  But  its  traditions  stretched  back 
a  hundred  thousand  years.  The  tra- 
ditions were  probably  imaginary.  Even 
so,  in  the  morning  of  the  world,  already 
there  were  ancient  cities.  There  was 
Nippur,  one  of  whose  gods,  El  Lil,  was 
lord  of  ghosts.  There  was  Eridu,  where 
Ea  was  lord  of  man.  There  was  Ur, 
where  Sin  was  lord  of  the  moon.  There 
were  other  divinities.  There  was  En- 
mesara,  lord  of  the  land  whence  none  re- 
turn, and  Makhir,  god  of  dreams. 

There  were  many  more  like  the  latter, 
1  Proc.  S.  B.  A.  xvi.  13-15. 
[87] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

so  many  that  their  sanctuaries  made  the 
realm  a  holy  land,  but  one  which,  ad- 
ministratively, was  an  aggregate  of  prin- 
cipalities that  Sargon,  nearly  six  thousand 
years  ago,  combined.  Ultimately,  from 
sheer  age,  the  empire  tottered.  It  would 
have  fallen  had  not  Khammurabi  surged. 
What  Sargon  made,  Khammurabi  solid- 
ified. Between  their  colossal  figures  two 
millennia  stretch.  These  giants  are  dis- 
tinct. None  the  less,  across  the  ages  they 
seem  to  fuse,  suggestively,  not  together, 
but  into  another  person. 

Sargon  has  descended  through  time 
clothed  in  a  little  of  the  poetry  which 
garments  nation  builders.  But  the  poetry 
is  not  a  mantle  for  the  imaginary.  In 
the  British  Museum  is  a  marble  ball  that 
he  dedicated  to  a  god.  Paris  has  the  seal 
of  his  librarian.1  Copies  of  his  annals 

1  Collection  de  Clerq.  pi.  5,  no.  46. 
[88] 


BEI^-MARDUK 

are  extant.1  In  these  it  is  related  that, 
when  a  child,  his  mother  put  him  in  a 
basket  of  rushes  and  set  him  adrift  on  the 
Euphrates.  Presently  he  was  rescued. 
Afterward  he  became  a  leader  of  men. 

Khammurabi  was  also  a  leader.  He 
was  a  legislator  as  well.  Sargon  united 
principalities,  Khammurabi  their  shrines. 
From  one  came  the  nation,  from  the 
other  the  god.  It  is  in  this  way  that  they 
fuse.  To  the  composite,  if  it  be  one, 
history  added  a  heightening  touch. 

The  Khammurabi  legislation  came  from 
Bel,  who,  originally,  was  a  local  sun-god 
of  Nippur.  There  he  was  regarded  as 
the  possessor  of  the  Chaldean  Urim  and 
Thummin,  the  tablets  of  destiny  with 
which  he  cast  the  fates  of  men.  In  the 
mythology  of  Babylonia  these  tablets 
were  stolen  by  the  god  of  storms,  who 

1  Cuneiform  Insc.  W.  A.  iv.  34. 
[89] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

kept  them  in  his  thunder  fastness.  Among 
the  forked  flames  of  the  lightning  there 
they  were  recovered  by  Bel,  who  revealed 
the  law  to  Khammurabi. 

The  theophany  is  perhaps  similar  to  that 
of  Sinai.  But  perhaps,  too,  it  is  better 
attested.  A  diorite  block,  found  at  Susa 
in  1902,  has  the  law  engraved  on  it.  On 
the  summit,  a  bas-relief  displays  the  god 
disclosing  the  statutes  to  the  king. 

There  are  other  analogies.  Sinai  was 
named  after  Sin,  who,  though  but  a 
moon-god,  was  previously  held  supreme 
for  the  reason  that,  in  primitive  Baby- 
lonia, the  lunar  year  preceded  the  solar. 
The  sanctuary  of  the  moon-god  was  Ur, 
of  which  Abraham  was  emir.  He  was 
more,  perhaps.  Sarratu,  from  which 
Sarai  comes,  was  the  title  of  the  moon- 
goddess.  In  Genesis,  Sarai  is  Abra- 
ham's wife.  Abraham  is  a  derivative  of 
[90] 


BEL-MARDUK 

Aburamu,  which  was  one  of  the  moon's 
many  names.1 

Among  these,  one  in  particular  has 
since  been  identified  with  Jahveh.  In 
addition,  a  clay  tablet  of  the  age  of  Kham- 
murabi,  now  in  the  British  Museum,  has 
on  it: 


That  flight  of  arrows,  being  interpreted, 
means:  Jave  ilu,  Jahveh  is  god.2 

Other  texts  show  that  a  title  of  Bel 
was  Masu,  a  word  that  letter  for  letter 
is  the  same  as  the  Hebrew  Mosheh  or 
Moses.3 

It  is  in  this  way  that  Sargon  and  Kham- 
murabi  fuse.  Meanwhile  the  title  Masu, 
or  hero,  was  not  confined  to  Bel.  It  was 
given  also  to  Marduk,  the  tutelary  god 

1  Sayce:  Guifford  Lectures. 

2  Delitzch:  Babel  und  Bibel. 
8  Records  of  the  Past,  i.  91. 

[91] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

of  Babylon,  from  whom  local  mono- 
theism proceeded. 

That  monotheism,  in  appearance  rela- 
tively modern,  actually  was  archaic.  The 
Chaldean  savants  knew  of  but  one  really 
existing  god.  To  them,  all  others  were 
his  emanations.  The  deus  exsuperantis- 
simus  was  represented  by  a  single  stroke 
of  the  reed,  a  sign  that  in  its  vagueness 
left  him  formless  and  incommunicable, 
therefore  unworshipable,  hence  without 
a  temple,  unless  Bab-ili,  Babylon,  the 
Gate  of  God,  may  be  so  construed. 

The  name  of  the  deity,  fastidiously  con- 
cealed from  the  vulgar,  was,  in  English, 
One.  Not  after,  or  beneath,  or  above, 
but  before  him,  a  trinity  swung  like  a 
screen.  From  it,  for  pendant,  another 
trinity  dangled.  From  the  latter  fell  a 
third.  Below  these  glories  were  the  cor- 
uscations of  an  entire  nation  of  inferior 
[92] 


BEL-MARDUK 

gods.  The  latter,  as  well  as  the  former, 
all  of  them,  were  but  the  fireworks  of 
One.  He  alone  was.  The  rest,  like 
Makhir,  were  gods  of  dream.  To  the 
savants,  that  is;  to  the  magi  and  seers. 
To  the  people  the  siderial  triads  and 
planetary  divinities  throned  in  the  Silver 
Sky  augustly  real,  equally  august,  and  in 
that  celestial  equality  remained,  until 
Khammurabi  gave  precedence  to  Bel,  who 
as  Marduk,  Bel  or  Baal  Marduk,  Lord 
Marduk,  became  supreme. 

Before  Bel,  then,  the  other  gods  faded 
as  the  Elohim  did  before  Jahveh,  with  the 
possible  difference  that  there  were  more 
to  fade  —  sixty-five  thousand,  Assurnat- 
sipal,  in  an  inscription,  declared.  Over 
that  army  Bel-Marduk  acquired  the  title, 
perhaps  significant,  of  Bel-Kissat,  Lord  of 
Hosts.  Yet  it  was  less  as  a  usurper  than 
as  an  absorber  that  the  ascension  was 
[93] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

achieved.  Bel  but  mounted  above  his 
former  peers  and  from  the  superior  height 
drew  their  attributes  to  himself.  It  was 
sacrilege  none  the  less.  As  such  it  alien- 
ated the  clergy  and  enraged  the  plebs. 
Begun  under  Khammurabi  and  com- 
pleted under  Nabonidos,  it  was  the  reason 
why,  during  the  latter's  reign,  orthodox 
Babylon  received  Cyrus  not  as  a  foe  but 
a  friend. 

From  the  spoliation,  meanwhile,  no 
nebulousness  resulted.  Bel  was  distinctly 
anthropomorphic.  His  earthly  plaisance 
was  the  Home  of  the  Height,  a  seven- 
floored  mountain  of  masonry,  a  rainbow 
pyramid  of  enamelled  brick.  At  the  top 
was  a  dome.  There,  in  a  glittering  cham- 
ber, on  a  dazzling  couch,  he  appeared. 
Elsewhere,  in  the  vermillion  recesses  of  a 
neighbouring  chapel,  that  winged  bulls 
guarded  and  frescoed  monsters  adorned, 
[94] 


BEL-MARDUK 

once  a  year  he  also  appeared,  and,  above 
the  mercy  seat,  on  an  alabaster  throne, 
sat,  or  was  supposed  to  sit,  contemplating 
the  tablets  of  destiny,  determining  when 
men  should  die. 

To  the  Greeks,  the  future  lay  in  the  lap 
of  the  gods.  To  the  Babylonians  the 
gods  alone  possessed  it,  as  alone  also  they 
possessed  the  present  and  the  past.  They 
had  all  time  as  all  men  have  their  day. 
That  day  was  here  and  it  was  brief. 
Death  was  a  descent  to  Aralu,  the  land 
whence  none  return,  a  region  of  the 
underworld,  called  also  Shualu,  where  the 
departed  were  nourished  on  dust.  Dust 
they  were  and  to  dust  they  returned. 

Extinction  was  not  a  punishment  or 
even  a  reward,  it  was  a  law.  Punishment 
was  visited  on  the  transgressor  here,  as 
here  also  the  piety  of  the  righteous  was 
rewarded.  When  death  came,  just  and 
[95] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

unjust  fared  alike.  The  Aryan  and 
Egyptian  belief  in  immortality  had  no 
place  in  this  creed,  and  consequently  it 
had  none  either  in  Israel,  where  Sheol  was 
a  replica  of  Shualu.  To  the  Semites  of 
Babylonia  and  Kanaan,  the  gods  alone 
were  immortal,  and  immortal  beings  would 
be  gods.  Man  could  not  become  divine 
while  his  deities  were  still  human. 

Exceptionally,  exceptional  beings  such 
as  Gilgames  and  Adra-Khasis  might  be 
translated  to  the  land  of  the  Silver  Sky, 
as  Elijah  was  translated  to  heaven,  but 
otherwise  the  only  mortals  that  could 
reach  it  were  kings,  for  a  king,  in  becom- 
ing sovereign,  became,  ipso  facto,  celes- 
tial. As  such,  ages  later,  Alexander  had 
himself  worshipped,  and  it  was  in  imita- 
tion of  his  apotheosis  that  the  subsequent 
Caesars  declared  themselves  gods.  Yet 
precisely  as  the  latter  were  man-made 
[96] 


BEL-MARDUK 

deities,  so  the  Babylonian  Baalim  were 
very  similar  to  human  kings. 

For  their  hunger  was  cream,  oil,  dates, 
the  flesh  of  ewe  lambs.  For  their  nos- 
trils was  the  perfume  of  prayers  and  of 
psalms;  for  their  passions  the  virginity 
of  girls.  Originally  the  first  born  of  men 
were  also  given  them,  but  while,  with 
higher  culture,  that  sacrifice  was  abol- 
ished, the  sacred  harlotry,  over  which 
Ishtar  presided,  remained.  Judaism 
omitted  to  incorporate  that,  but  in  Kanaan, 
which  Babylonia  profoundly  influenced, 
it  was  general  and,  though  reviled  by 
Israel,  was  tempting  even,  and  perhaps 
particularly,  to  Solomon.1 

The  latter's  temple  was  similar  to 
Bel's,  from  which  the  Hebraic  ritual, 
terms  of  the  Law,  the  Torah  itself,  may 
have  proceeded,  as,  it  may  be,  the  Sabbath 

1 1  Kings  xi.  5.     "Solomon  went  after  Ashtoreth." 
[97] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

did  also.  On  a  tablet  recovered  from 
the  library  of  Assurbanipal  it  is  written: 
"The  seventh  day  is  a  fast  day,  a  lucky 
day,  a  sabbatuv" — literally,  a  day  of 
rest  for  the  heart.1 

In  Aralu  that  day  never  ceased;  the 
dead  there,  buried,  Herodotos  said,  in 
honey,  were  unresurrectably  dead,  dead 
to  the  earth,  dead  to  the  Silver  Sky.  Yet 
though  that  was  an  article  of  faith, 
through  a  paradox  profoundly  poetic, 
there  was  a  belief  equally  general,  in 
ghosts,  in  hobgoblins,  in  men  with  the 
faces  of  ravens,  in  others  with  the  bodies 
of  scorpions,  and  in  the  post-mortem 
persistence  of  girls  that  died  pure. 

These  latter,  in  searching  for  someone 
whom  they  might  seduce,  must  have  after- 
ward wandered  into  the  presence  of  St. 
Anthony.  Perhaps,  too,  it  was  they  who, 

1  Cuneiform  Insc.  W.  A.  ii.  32. 
[98] 


BEL-MARDUK 

as  succubi,  emotionalized  the  dreams  of 
monks.  Yet,  in  view  of  Ishtar,  they 
could  not  have  been  very  numerous  in 
Babylon  where,  however,  they  had  a 
queen,  Lilit,  the  Lilith  of  the  Talmud, 
Adam's  vampire  wife,  who  conceived  with 
him  shapes  of  sin.  In  these  also  the 
Babylonians  believed,  and  naively  they 
represented  them  in  forms  so  revolting 
that  the  sight  of  their  own  image  alarmed 
them  away. 

From  these  shapes  or,  more  exactly, 
from  sin  itself,  it  was  very  properly  held 
that  all  diseases  came.  Medicine  conse- 
quently was  a  branch  of  religion.  The 
physician  was  a  priest.  He  asked  the 
patient:  Have  you  shed  your  neigh- 
bour's blood  ?  Have  you  approached 
your  neighbour's  wife  ?  Have  you  stolen 
your  neighbour's  garment  ?  Or  is  it  that 
you  have  failed  to  clothe  the  naked? 
[99] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

According  to  the  responses  he  pre- 
scribed.1 

But  the  priest  who  was  a  physician 
was  also  a  wizard.  He  peeped  and  mut- 
tered, or,  more  subtly,  provided  enchanted 
philters  in  which  simples  had  been  dis- 
solved. These  devices  failing,  there  was 
a  series  of  incantations,  the  Ritual  of 
the  Whispered  Charm,  in  which  the 
most  potent  conjuration  was  the  incom- 
municable name.  To  that  all  things 
yielded,  even  the  gods.2  But  like  the 
Shem  of  the  Jews,  it  was  probably  never 
wholly  uttered,  because,  save  to  the  magi, 
not  wholly  known.  In  the  formulae  of 
the  necromancers  it  is  omitted,  though 
in  practice  it  may  have  been  pronounced. 

Even  that  is  doubtful.  A  knowledge 
of  it  conferred  powers  similar  to  those 

1 IV.  R.  50-53.     Cf.  Delitzch:  op.  tit. 

2  Lenormant:  La  Magie  chez  les  Chaldeens. 

[100] 


BEL-MARDUK 

that  have  been  attributed  to  the  Christ, 
and  which  the  Sadducees  ascribed  to  his 
knowledge  of  the  tetragrammation.  A 
knowledge  of  the  Babylonian  Shem  was 
as  potent.  It  served  not  only  men  but 
gods.  Ishtar,  for  purposes  of  her  own, 
wanted  to  get  into  Aralu.  In  the  re- 
covered epic  of  her  descent,  imperiously 
she  demanded  entrance: 

Porter,  open  thy  door. 

Open  thy  door  that  I  may  enter. 

If  thou  dost  not  open  thy  door, 

I  will  attack  it,  I  will  break  down  the  bars, 

I  will  cause  the  dead  to  rise  and  devour  the  living.1 

Ishtar  was  admitted.  But  Aralu  was 
the  land  whence  none  return.  Once  in, 
she  could  not  get  out  until,  ultimately, 
the  incommunicable  name  was  uttered. 
The  epic  says  that,  in  the  interim,  there 
was  on  earth  neither  love  nor  loving.  In 
possible  connection  with  which  incanta- 

1  Records  of  the  Past. 
[101] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

tions  have  been  found,  deprecating  "the 
consecrated  harlots  with  rebellious  hearts 
that  have  abandoned  the  holy  places."1 

In  addition  to  the  Ritual  of  the  Whis- 
pered Charm,  there  was  the  Illumination 
of  Bel,  an  encyclopaedia  of  astrology  in 
seventy-two  volumes  which  the  suburban 
library  of  Borsippa  contained.  During 
the  captivity  many  Jews  must  have  gone 
there.  In  the  large  light  halls  they  were 
free  to  read  whatever  they  liked,  religion, 
history,  science,  the  romance  of  all  three. 
The  books,  catalogued  and  numbered, 
were  ranged  on  shelves.  One  had  but  to 
ask.  The  service  was  gratis. 

Babylon,  then,  prismatic  and  learned, 
was  the  most  respectable  place  on  earth. 
For  ten  thousand  years  man  had  there 
consulted  the  stars.  But  though  respect- 
able, it  was  also  equivocal.  During  a 

1  Lenormant;  op.  cit. 
[102] 


BEL-MARDUK 

period  equally  long  —  or  brief  —  the  girls 
of  the  city  had  loosed  their  girdles  for 
Ishtar  and  yielded  themselves  to  anyone, 
stranger  or  neighbour,  that  asked.  In 
the  service  of  the  goddess  their  brothers 
occasionally  feigned  that  they  too  were 
girls.  Meanwhile,  from  the  summit  of  a 
seven -floored  pyramid,  mortals  contem- 
plated the  divine. 

Beneath  was  cosmopolis,  the  golden 
cup  that,  in  the  words  of  Jeremiah,  made 
the  whole  world  drunk.  Seated  im- 
mensely on  the  twin  banks  of  the  Eu- 
phrates —  banks  that  bridges  above  and 
tunnels  beneath  interjoined  —  Babylon 
more  nearly  resembled  a  walled  nation 
than  a  fortified  town.  Within  the  gates, 
in  an  enclosure  ample  and  noble,  a  space 
that  exceeded  a  hundred  square  miles, 
an  area  sufficient  for  Paris  quintupled, 
observatories  and  palaces  rose  above  the 
[103] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

roar  of  human  tides  that  swept  in  waves 
through  the  wide  boulevards,  surged 
over  the  quays,  flooded  the  gardens, 
eddied  through  the  open-air  lupanar, 
circled  among  statues  of  gods  and  bulls, 
poured  out  of  the  hundred  gates,  or  broke 
against  the  polychrome  walls  and  seethed 
back  in  the  avenues,  along  which,  to  the 
high  flourishes  of  military  bands,  passed 
armed  hoplites,  merchants  in  long  robes, 
cloaked  bedouins,  Kelts  in  bearskins, 
priests  in  spangled  dresses,  tiara'd  princes, 
burdened  slaves,  kings  discrowned,  fur- 
tive forms  —  prostitutes,  pederasts,  hu- 
man wolves,  vermin,  sheep  —  the  flux 
and  reflux  of  the  gigantic  city. 

In  that  ocean,  the  captive  Jews,  if  cap- 
tive they  were,  rolled,  lost  as  a  handful  of 
salt  spilt  in  the  sea.  Yet,  from  the  depths, 
a  few  had  swum  up  and,  filtering  adroitly, 
had  reached  the  dignity  of  high  place. 
[104] 


BEL-MARDUK 

One  was  pontiff.  Others  were  viceroys. 
In  addition  to  being  pontiff,  Daniel  was 
chancellor  of  the  realm.  Ezra  was  rector 
of  the  university.  As  pontiff  of  a  college 
of  wizards,  Daniel  may  have  known  the 
future.  As  Minister  of  Wisdom,  Ezra 
may  have  known,  what  is  quite  as  diffi- 
cult, the  past.  For  the  moment  there 
was  but  the  present.  Over  it  ruled  Bel- 
shazzar. 

Yet,  ruler  though  he  was,  there  were 
powers  potenter  than  his  own:  Baalim, 
outraged  at  the  elevation  of  a  parvenu 
god;  apriesthood  consequently  disaffected ; 
and,  without,  at  the  gates,  the  foe. 

It  would  have  been  interesting  to  have 
assisted  at  the  final  festival  when,  be- 
neath cyclopean  arches,  in  the  sunlight 
of  clustered  candelabra,  amid  the  glitter 
of  gold  and  white  teeth,  among  the  fair 
sultanas  that  were  strewn  like  flowers 
[105] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

through  the  throne-room  of  the  imperial 
court,  Belshazzar  lay,  smiling,  amused 
rather  than  annoyed  at  the  impudent 
menace  of  Cyrus. 

Babylon  was  impregnable.  He  knew 
it.  But  the  subtle  Jews,  the  indignant 
gods,  the  alienated  priests  to  whom  the 
Persian  was  a  redeemer,  of  these  he  did 
not  think.  Daniel  had  indeed  warned 
him  and,  vaguely,  he  had  promised  some- 
thing which  he  had  since  forgot. 

Beyond,  an  orchestra  was  playing. 
Further  yet,  columns  upheld  a  ceiling  so 
lofty  that  it  was  lost.  On  the  adjacent 
wall  was  a  frieze  of  curious  and  chimeri- 
cal beasts.  Belshazzar  was  looking  at 
them.  In  their  dumb  stupidity  was  a 
suggestion  of  the  foe.  The  suggestion 
amused.  Smiling  still  he  raised  a  cup. 
Abruptly,  before  it  could  reach  his  lips, 
it  fell  with  a  clatter  on  the  lapis  lazuli  of 
[106] 


BEL-MARDUK 

the  floor  beneath.  Before  him,  on  that 
wall,  beneath  those  beasts,  the  necro- 
mancy of  the  priesthood  had  projected  an 
armless,  fluidic  hand  that  mounted,  de- 
scended, tracing  with  a  forefinger  the 
three  luminous  hierograms  of  his  doom. 

The  story,  a  little  drama,  was,  with  the 
tale  concerning  Nebuchadnezzar,  that  of 
Daniel,  and  other  novels  quite  as  strange, 
evolved  long  later  in  the  wide  leisures  of 
Jerusalem.  The  fluidic  hand  did  not 
appear.  Even  had  it  zigzagged  there  was 
no  Belshazzar  to  frighten. 

Only  the  doom  was  real.  Cyrus  was 
clothed  with  it.  To  the  trumpetings  of 
heralds  and  the  sheen  of  angels'  wings, 
triumphantly  he  came.  Then,  presently, 
by  royal  decree,  the  Jews,  manumitted 
and  released,  retraced  their  steps,  bur- 
dened with  spoil;  with  the  lore  of  two 
distinct  civilizations,  which,  fusing  in  the 
[107] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

great  square  letters  of  the  Pentateuch, 
was  to  become  the  poetry  of  all  mankind. 
Bayblon,  ultimately,  with  her  goblin 
gods  and  harlot  goddess,  sank  into  her 
own  Aralii.  Nourished  there  on  dust, 
Lilit,  with  the  sister  vampires  of  eternal 
night,  fed  on  her. 


[108] 


JEHOVAH 

ACAMEL'S-HAIR  tent  set  in  the 
desert  was  the  first  cathedral,  the 
earliest  cloister  of  latest  ideals.  Set  not 
in  one  desert  merely  but  in  two,  in  the 
infinite  of  time  as  well  as  in  that  of  space, 
there  was  about  it  a  limitlessness  in  which 
the  past  could  sleep,  the  future  awake, 
and  into  which  all  things,  the  human,  the 
divine,  gods  and  romance,  could  enter. 

The  human  came  first.  Then  the  gods. 
Then  romance.  The  divine  was  their 
triple  expansion.  It  was  an  after  growth, 
in  other  lands,  that  tears  had  watered. 
In  the  desert  it  was  unimagined.  Only 
the  gods  had  been  conceived. 
[109] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

The  gods  were  many  and  yet  but  one. 
Though  plural  they  were  singular.  The 
subjects  of  impersonal  verbs,  they  repre- 
sented the  pronoun  in  such  expressions 
as:  it  rains;  it  thunders.  "It"  was 
Elohim.  Already  among  nomad  Semites 
monotheism  had  begun.  Yet  with  this 
distinction.  Each  tribe  had  separate  sets 
of  Its  that  guided,  guarded,  and  scourged. 
Omnipresent  but  not  omnipotent,  any 
humiliation  to  the  family  that  they  had 
in  charge  humiliated  them.  It  made 
them  angry,  therefore  vindictive,  conse- 
quently unjust.  It  may  be  that  they 
were  not  very  ethical.  Perhaps  the 
bedouins  were  not  either.  Man  fashions 
his  god  in  proportion  to  his  intelligence. 
That  of  the  nomad  was  slender.  He 
lacked,  what  the  Aryan  shepherd  pos- 
sessed, the  ability  for  mythological  inven- 
tion. The  defect  was  due  to  his  speech, 
[110] 


JEHOVAH 

which  did  not  lend  itself  to  the  deification 
of  epithets.  Even  had  it  done  so,  it  is 
probable  that  his  mode  of  life  would  have 
rendered  the  paraphernalia  of  polytheism 
impossible.  People  constantly  moving 
from  place  to  place  could  not  be  cum- 
bered with  idols.  The  Elohim  were, 
therefore,  a  convenience  for  travellers 
and  an  unidolatrous  monotheism  a  neces- 
sity which  the  absence  of  vehicles  imposed. 
On  the  other  hand,  given  every  facility, 
it  is  presumable  that  the  result  would 
have  been  the  same.  Mythology  is  the 
mother  of  poetry.  Idolatry  is  the  father  of 
art.  Neither  could  appeal  to  a  people  to 
whom  delicacy  was  an  unknown  god.  Had 
it  been  known  and  a  fetish,  they  could  not 
have  become  the  practical  people  that  they 
are.  Even  then  they  were  shrewd.  Their 
Elohim  might  alarm  but  never  delude. 
Israel  was  uncheatable  even  in  dream, 
[ill] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

Originally  emigrants  from  Arabia,  the 
nomads  reached  Syria,  some  directly, 
others  circuitously,  by  way  of  Padan- 
Aram  and  across  the  Euphrates,  whence 
perhaps  their  name  of  Ibrim  or  Hebrews 
—  Those  from  beyond.  In  the  journey 
Babel  and  Ur  must  have  detained.  These 
cities,  with  their  culture  relatively  deep 
and  their  observatories  equally  high,  be- 
came, in  after  days,  a  source  of  legend,  of 
wonder,  of  hatred,  perhaps  of  revelation 
as  well. 

At  the  time  the  nomads  had  no  cos- 
mogony or  theories.  The  Chaldeans  had 
both.  There  was  a  story  of  creation,  an- 
other of  antediluvian  kings  and  of  the 
punishment  that  overtook  them.  There 
was  also  a  story  of  an  emir  of  Ur,  an  old 
man  who  had  benevolently  killed  an  ani- 
mal instead  of  his  son.  The  story,  like 
the  others,  must  have  impressed.  In 
[112] 


JEHOVAH 

after  years  the  old  man  became  Abraham, 
a  great  person,  who  had  conversed  with 
the  Elohim  and  whose  descendants  they 
were. 

The  story  of  creation  also  impressed. 
It  was  enlightening  and  comprehensible. 
The  parallel  theory  of  spontaneous  gen- 
eration and  the  progressive  evolution  of 
the  species  which  the  magi  entertained, 
they  probably  never  heard.  Even  other- 
wise it  was  too  complex  for  minds  as  yet 
untutored.  The  fables  alone  appealed. 
Mentally  compressed  into  portable  shape, 
carried  along,  handed  down,  their  origin 
afterward  forgotten,  they  became  the 
traditions  of  a  nation,  which,  eminently 
conservative,  preserved  what  it  found, 
among  other  things  the  name,  perhaps 
inharmonious,  of  Jhvh.1 

1  Renan :  Histoire  du  peuple  d 'Israel.  Kucnen :  De 
Godsdienst  van  Israel. 

[113] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

That  name,  since  found  on  an  inscrip- 
tion of  Sargon,  appears  to  have  been  the 
title  of  a  local  god  of  Sinai,  whom  the 
nomads  may  have  identified  with  Elohim, 
particularly,  perhaps,  since  he  presided 
over  thunder,  the  phenomenon  that 
alarmed  them  most  and  which,  in  con- 
sequence, inspired  the  greatest  awe.  That 
awe  they  put  into  the  name,  the  pronun- 
ciation of  which,  like  the  origin  of  their 
traditions,  they  afterward  forgot.  In  sub- 
sequent rabbinical  writings  it  became 
Shem,  the  Name;  Shemhammephoresh, 
the  Revealed  Name,  uttered  but  once  a 
year,  on  the  day  of  Atonement,  by  the 
high  priest  in  the  Holy  of  Holies.  Men- 
tion of  it  by  anyone  else  was  deemed  a 
capital  offence,  though,  permissibly,  it 
might  be  rendered  El  Shaddai,  the  Al- 
mighty. That  term  the  Septuagint  trans- 
lated into  6  Kv/wog,  a  Greek  form,  in  the 
[114] 


JEHOVAH 

singular,  of  the  Aramaic  plural  Adonai, 
which  means  Baalim,  or  sun  lords. 

That  form  the  Vulgate  gave  as  Dominus 
and  posterior  theology  as  God.  The 
latter  term,  common  to  all  Teutonic 
tongues,  has  no  known  meaning.  It 
designates  that  which,  to  the  limited  in- 
telligence of  man,  has  been,  and  must  be, 
incomprehensible.  But  the  original  term 
Jhvh,  which,  in  the  seventeenth  century, 
was  developed  into  Jehovah,  yet  which, 
the  vowels  being  wholly  conjectural, 
might  have  been  developed  into  anything 
else,  clearly  appealed  to  wayfarers  to 
whom  Chaldean  science  was  a  book  that 
remained  closed  until  Nebuchadnezzar 
blew  their  descendants  back  into  the 
miraculous  Babel  of  their  youth. 

Meanwhile,  apart  from  the  name  — 
now  generally  written  Jahveh  —  apart 
too  from  the  fables  and  the  enduring 
[115] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

detestation  which  the  colossal  city  in- 
spired, probably  but  one  other  thing 
impressed,  and  that  was  the  observance 
of  the  Sabbath.  To  a  people  whose 
public  works  were  executed  by  forced 
labour,  such  a  day  was  a  necessity.  To 
vagrants  it  was  not,  and,  though  the 
custom  interested,  it  was  not  adopted 
by  them  until  their  existence  from  nomad 
had  become  fixed. 

At  this  latter  period  they  were  in 
Kanaan.  Whether  in  the  interval  a  tribe, 
the  Beni-Israel,  went  down  into  Egypt, 
is  a  subject  on  which  Continental  scholar- 
ship has  its  doubts.  The  early  life  of  the 
tribe's  leader  and  legislator  is  usually 
associated  with  Rameses  II.,  a  pharaoh 
of  the  XIX.  dynasty.  But  it  has  been 
found  that  incidents  connected  with 
Moses  must  apparently  have  occurred, 
if  they  occurred  at  all,  at  a  period  not 
[116] 


JEHOVAH 

earlier  than  the  XXVI.  dynasty,  which 
constitutes  a  minimum  difference  of  seven 
hundred  years.  Yet,  in  view  of  the 
decalogue,  with  its  curious  analogy  to 
the  negative  confession  in  the  Book  of 
the  Dead;  in  view  also  of  a  practice  sur- 
gical and  possibly  hygienic  which,  cus- 
tomary among  the  Egyptians,  was  adopted 
by  the  Jews;  in  view,  further,  of  cere- 
monies and  symbols  peculiarly  Egyptian 
that  were  also  absorbed,  a  sojourn  in 
Goshen  there  may  have  been. 

The  spoiling  of  the  Egyptians,  a 
roguery  on  which  Israel  afterward  prided 
herself,  is  a  trait  perhaps  too  typical  to 
be  lightly  dismissed.  On  the  other  hand, 
if  Moses  were,  which  is  at  least  problem- 
atic, and  if,  in  addition  to  being,  he  was 
both  the  nephew  of  a  pharaoh  and  the 
son-in-law  of  a  priest,  as  such  one  to 
whom,  in  either  quality,  the  arcana  of 
[117] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

the  creed  would  be  revealed,  it  becomes 
curious  that  nowhere  in  the  Pentateuch 
is  there  any  doctrine  of  a  future  life.  Of 
the  entire  story,  it  may  be  that  only  the 
journey  into  the  Sinaiatic  peninsula  is 
true,  and  of  that  there  probably  re- 
mained but  tradition,  on  which  history 
was  based  much  later,  by  writers  who 
had  only  surmises  concerning  the  time 
and  circumstances  in  which  it  occurred. 
Yet  equally  with  the  roguery,  Moses 
may  have  been.  Seen  through  modern 
criticism  his  figure  fades  though  his  name 
persists.  To  that  name  the  Septuagint 
tried  to  give  an  Egyptian  flavour.  In 
their  version  it  is  always  Meovcnjs,  a  com- 
pound derived  from  the  Egyptian  mo, 
water,  and  tises,  saved  from,  or  Saved- 
from- the- water.1  Per  contra,  the  Hebrew 
form  Mosheh  is,  as  already  indicated,  the 

1  Josephus:  Antiq.  ii.  9. 
[118] 


JEHOVAH 

same  as  the  Babylonian  Masii,  a  term 
which  means  at  once  leader  and  littera- 
teur, in  addition  to  being  the  cognomen 
of  a  god.1 

Moses  is  said  to  have  led  his  people  out 
of  bondage.  He  was  the  writer  to  whom 
the  Pentateuch  has  been  ascribed.  But 
he  was  also  a  prophet.  In  Babylon,  the 
god  of  prophecy  was  Nebo.  It  was  on 
Mount  Nebo  that  Jahveh  commanded 
the  prophet  of  Israel  to  die.  Moreover, 
the  divinity  that  had  Masu  for  cognomen 
was,  as  is  shown  by  a  Babylonian  text, 
the  primitive  god  of  the  sun  at  Nippur, 
but  the  sun  at  noon,  at  the  period  of  its 
greatest  effulgence,  at  the  hour  when  it 
wars  with  whatever  opposes,  when  it 
wars  as  Jahveh  did,  or  as  the  latter  may 
be  assumed  to  have  warred,  since  Isaiah 
represented  him  as  a  mighty  man,  roar- 

1  Sayce:  The  Religion  of  the  Babylonians. 
[119] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

ing  at  his  enemies,  exciting  the  fury  of 
the  fight,  marching  personally  to  the  con- 
flict, and,  in  the  Fourth  Roll  of  the  Law 
•  (Numbers),  there  is  mention  of  a  book 
entitled:  The  Wars  of  Jahveh. 

Whether,  then,  Moses  is  but  a  com- 
posite of  things  Babylonian  fused  in  an 
effort  to  show  a  link  between  a  god  and 
a  people,  is  conjectural.  But  it  is  also 
immaterial.  The  one  instructive  fact  is 
that,  in  a  retrospect,  the  god,  immediately 
after  the  exodus,  became  dictator. 

Yet  even  in  the  later  age,  when  the 
retrospect  was  effected,  conceptions  were 
evidently  immature.  On  one  occasion 
the  god  met  Moses,  tried  to  kill  him,  but 
finally  let  him  go.  The  picture  is  that 
of  a  personal  struggle.1  Again,  the  spec- 
tacle of  his  back  which  he  vouchsafed  to 
Moses  is  construable  only  as  an  arriere- 

1  Exodus  iv.  24-26. 
[120] 


JEHOVAH 

pensee,  unless  it  be  profound  philosophy, 
unless  it  be  taken  that  the  face  of  God 
represents  Providence,  to  see  which  would 
be  to  behold  the  future,  whereas  the  back 
disclosed  the  past. 

It  is,  however,  hardly  probable  that  that 
construction  occurred  to  the  editors  of 
the  Pentateuch,  who,  elsewhere,  repre- 
sented Jahveh  as  a  butcher,  insatiable, 
jealous,  vindictive,  treacherous,  and  vain, 
one  that  consigned  all  nations  other  than 
Israel  to  ruin  and  whom  a  poet  repre- 
sented trampling  people  in  anger,  mak- 
ing them  drunk  with  his  fury,  and  defiling 
his  raiment  with  blood.1 

But  in  the  period  related  in  Exodw, 
Jahveh  was  but  the  tutelary  god  of  an 
itinerant  tribe  that,  in  its  gipsy  lack  of 
territorial  possessions,  was  not  even  a 
nation.  Like  his  people  he  too  was  a 

1  Isaiah  Ixiii.  1-6. 
[121] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

vagrant.  Like  them  he  had  no  home. 
Other  gods  had  temples  and  altars.  He 
lacked  so  much  as  a  shrine.  In  pre- 
figurement  of  the  Wandering  Jew,  each 
day  he  moved  on.  The  threats  of  a  land 
that  never  smiled  were  reflected  in  his 
face.  The  sight  of  him  was  death.  Cer- 
tainly he  was  terrible. 

This  conception,  corrected  by  later 
writers,  was  otherwise  revised.  In  the 
interim  Jahveh  himself  was  transformed. 
He  became  El,  the  god;  presently  El 
Shaddai,  God  Almighty.  In  the  ascen- 
sion former  traits  disappeared.  He  de- 
veloped into  the  deity  of  emphatic  right. 
Morality,  hitherto  absent  from  religion, 
entered  into  it.  Israel,  who  perhaps 
had  been  careless,  who,  like  Solomon,  had 
followed  Ishtar,  became  austere.  There- 
after, Judaism,  of  which  Christianity  and 
Muhammadanismwere  the  after  thoughts, 
[122] 


JEHOVAH 

was  destined  to  represent  almost  the  sum 
total  of  the  human  conscience. 

But  in  Kanaan,  during  the  rude  be- 
ginnings, though  Jahveh  was  jealous, 
Ishtar,  known  locally  as  Ashtoreth,  al- 
lured. Conjointly  with  Baal,  the  in- 
digenous term  for  Bel,  circum adjacently 
she  ruled.  The  propitiatory  rites  of  these 
fair  gods  were  debauchery  and  infanti- 
cide, the  loosening  of  the  girdles  of  girls, 
the  thrusting  of  children  into  fires.  It  may 
be  that  these  ceremonies  at  first  amazed 
the  Hebrews.  But  conscientiously  they 
adopted  them,  less  perhaps  through  zeal 
than  politeness;  because,  in  this  curious 
epoch,  on  entering  a  country  it  was 
thought  only  civil  to  serve  the  divinities 
that  were  there,  in  accordance  with  the 
ritual  that  pleased  them. 

With  the  mere  mortal  inhabitants, 
Israel  was  less  ceremonious.  Com- 
[123] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

manded  by  Jahveh  to  kill,  extermination 
was  but  an  act  of  piety.  It  was  then, 
perhaps,  that  the  Wars  of  Jahveh  were 
sung,  a  paean  that  must  have  been  reso- 
nant with  cries,  with  the  death-rattle  of 
kingdoms,  with  the  shouts  of  the  invading 
host.  From  the  breast-plates  of  the 
chosen,  the  terror  of  Sinai  gleamed.  Men 
could  not  see  their  faces  and  live.  The 
moon  was  their  servant.  To  aid  them 
the  sun  stood  still.  They  encroached, 
they  slaughtered,  they  quelled.  In  the 
conquest  a  nation  was  born.  From  that 
bloody  cradle  the  God  of  Humanity  came. 
But  around  and  about  it  was  vacancy. 
In  emerging  from  one  solitude  the  Jews 
created  another.  They  have  never  left 
it.  The  desert  which  they  made  des- 
tined them  to  be  alone  on  this  earth,  as 
their  god  was  to  be  solitary  in  heaven. 
Meanwhile  there  had  been  no  kings  in 
[124] 


JEHOVAH 

Israel.  With  the  nation  royalty  came. 
David  followed  Saul.  After  him  was 
Solomon.  It  is  presumably  at  this  period 
that  traditions,  orally  transmitted  from  a 
past  relatively  remote,  were  first  put  in 
writing.  Previously  it  is  conjectural  if 
the  Jews  could  write.  If  they  could,  it  is 
uncertain  whether  they  made  any  use  of 
the  ability  other  than  in  the  possible 
compilation  of  toledoth,  such  as  the  Book 
of  the  Generations  of  Adam  and  the  Wars 
of  Jahveh,  works  that,  later,  may  have 
served  as  data  for  the  Pentateuch.  Even 
then,  the  compositions  must  have  been 
crude,  and  such  rolls  as  existed  may  have 
been  lost  when  Nebuchadnezzar  over- 
turned Jerusalem. 

Presumably,  it  was  not  until  the  post- 
exilic  period  that,  under  the  editorship 
perhaps  of  Ezra,  the  definitive  edition  of 
the  Torah  was  produced.     This  suppo- 
[125] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

sition  existing  texts  support.  In  Genesis 
(xxxvii.  31)  it  is  written:  "These  are 
the  kings  of  Edom  before  there  reigned 
any  king  over  the  children  of  Israel." 
The  passage  shows,  if  it  shows  anything, 
that  there  were,  or  had  been,  kings  in 
Israel  at  the  time  when  the  passage  itself 
was  written.  It  is,  therefore,  at  least 
post-Davidic.  In  Genesis  another  pas- 
sage (xlix.  10)  says:  "The  sceptre  shall 
not  pass  from  Judah  until  Shiloh  come." 
Judah  was  the  tribe  that  became  pre- 
eminent in  Israel  after  the  captivity. 
The  passage  is  therefore  post-exilic, 
consequently  so  is  Genesis,  and  obvi- 
ously the  rest  of  the  Pentateuch  as 
well.  Or,  if  not  obviously,  perhaps 
demonstrably.  In  II  Esdras  xiv.  22-48 
it  is  stated  that  the  writer,  a  candle  of 
understanding  in  his  heart,  and  aided  by 
five  swift  scribes,  recomposed  the  Law, 
[126] 


JEHOVAH 

which,  previously  burned,  was  known  to 
none. 

The  burning  referred  to  is  what  may, 
perhaps,  be  termed  religious  fiction. 
Barring  toledoth  and  related  data  that 
may  have  been  lost,  the  Law  had  al- 
most certainly  not  existed  before,  and 
this  post-exilic  romance  concerning  it  was 
evolved  in  a  laudable  effort  to  show  its 
Mosaic  source.  What  is  true  of  the  Law 
is,  in  a  measure,  true  of  the  Prophets. 
None  of  them  anterior  to  Cyrus,  all 
are  later  than  Alexander.  Spiritually 
very  near  to  Christianity,  chronologi- 
cally they  are  neighbourly  too.  If  not 
divinely  inspired,  they  at  least  disclosed 
the  ideal. 

Previously  the  ideal  had  not  perhaps 
been  very  apparent.  Apart  from  seces- 
sions, rebellions,  concussions,  convulsions 
that  deified  Hatred  until  Jahveh,  in  the 
[127] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

person  of  Nebuchadnezzar,  talked  As- 
syrian, and  then,  in  the  person  of  Cyrus, 
talked  Zend,  the  god  of  Israel,  even  in 
Israel,  was  not  unique.  He  had  a  home, 
his  first,  the  Temple,  built  gorgeously  by 
Solomon,  where  invisibly,  mysteriously, 
perhaps  terribly,  beneath  the  wings  of 
cherubim  that  rose  from  the  depths  of  the 
Holy  of  Holies,  he  dwelled.  But  the 
shrine,  however  ornate,  was  not  the  only 
one.  There  were  other  altars,  other  gods ; 
the  plentiful  sanctuaries  of  Ashera,  of 
Moloch  and  of  Baal.  On  the  adjacent 
hilltops  the  phallus  stood.  In  the  neigh- 
bouring groves  the  kisses  of  Ishtar  con- 
sumed. 

The  Lady  of  Girdles  was  worshipped 
there  not  by  men  and  women  only,  but 
by  girls  with  girls;  by  others  too,  not  in 
couples,  but  singly,  girls  who  in  their 
solitary  devotions  had  instruments  for 
[128] 


JEHOVAH 

aid.1  Religion,  as  yet,  had  but  the  slight- 
est connection  with  morality,  a  circum- 
stance explicable  perhaps  by  the  fact  that 
it  resumed  the  ethnical  conscience  of  a 
race.  Between  the  altar  of  El  Shaddai 
and  the  shrines  of  other  gods  there  were 
many  differences,  of  which  geography  was 
the  least.  Jahveh,  from  a  tutelary  god, 
had  indeed  become  the  national  divinity 
of  a  chosen  people.  But  the  Moabites 
were  the  chosen  people  of  Chemos;  the 
Ammonites  were  the  chosen  people  of 
Rimmon;  the  Babylonians  were  the  chosen 
people  of  Bel.  The  title  conferred  no 
distinction.  As  a  consequence,  to  differ- 
erentiate  Jahveh  from  all  other  gods,  and 
Israel  from  all  other  people,  to  make  the 
one  unique  and  the  other  pontiff  and 
shepherd  of  the  nations  of  the  world,  be- 

1  Cf.  Deut.  xxiii.  17,  where  'al6,m6ih  (puellae)  is 
rendered  in  the  Sapphist  sense.  Ezekiel  xvi.  17. 
Fecisti  tibi  imagines  masculinas. 

[129] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

came  the  dream  of  anonymous  poets,  one 
that  prophets,  sometimes  equally  anony- 
mous, proclaimed.  It  was  the  prophets 
that  reviled  the  false  gods,  denounced 
the  abominations  of  Ishtar,  and  purified 
the  Israelite  heart.  While  nothing  dis- 
cernible, or  even  imaginable,  menaced, 
however  slightly,  the  great  empires  of  that 
day,  the  prophets  were  the  first  to  realize 
that  the  Orient  was  dead.  When  the 
Christ  announced  that  the  end  of  the 
world  was  at  hand,  he  but  reiterated  an- 
terior predictions  that  presently  were  ful- 
filled. A  world  did  end.  That  of 
antiquity  ceased  to  be. 

It  was  the  prophets  that  foretold  it. 
Gloomy,  fanatic,  implacable  and,  it  may 
be,  mad,  yet  inspired  at  least  by  genius 
which  itself,  while  madness,  is  a  madness 
wholly  divine,  they  heralded  the  future, 
they  established  the  past.  Abraham  they 
[130] 


JEHOVAH 

drew  from  allegory,  Moses  from  myth. 
They  made  them  live,  and  so  immortally 
that  one  survives  in  Islam,  the  other  in 
words  that  are  a  law  of  grace  for  all. 

If,  in  visions  possibly  ecstatic,  they  be- 
held heights  that  lost  themselves  in  im- 
mensity, and  saw  there  an  ineffable  name 
seared  by  forked  flames  on  a  tablet  of 
stone ;  if  that  spectacle  and  the  theophany 
of  it  were  but  poetry,  the  decalogue  is  a 
fact,  one  so  solid  that  though  ages  have 
gone,  though  empires  have  crumbled, 
though  the  customs  of  man  have  altered, 
though  the  sky  itself  have  changed,  still 
is  obeyed  the  commandment:  Thou  shalt 
have  no  other  gods  before  me. 

From  Chemos  in  Moab,  from  Rimon 
among  the  Ammonites,  no  such  edict 
had  come.  It  felled  them.  Amon-Ra 
it  tore  from  the  celestial  Nile,  and  Bel- 
Marduk  from  the  Silver  Sky.  The  Re- 
[131] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

fai'm  hid  them  in  shadows  as  surely  as 
they  buried  there  the  high  and  potent 
lords  of  Greece  and  Rome.  These  inter- 
ments, completed  by  others,  the  prophets 
began.  For  it  was  they  who,  in  addition 
to  the  command,  revealed  the  command- 
ant, creator  of  whatever  is:  the  Being 
Absolute  that  abhorred  evil,  loved  right- 
eousness, punished  the  transgressor  and 
rewarded  the  just;  El  Shaddai,  then  really 
Lord  of  Hosts. 

It  may  be  that  already  in  Israel  there 
had  been  some  prescience  of  this.  But  it 
lacked  the  authority  of  inspired  text. 
The  omission  was  one  that  only  seers 
could  remedy.  It  was  presumably  in 
these  circumstances  that  an  agreement 
was  imagined  which,  construed  as  a  con- 
dition of  a  covenant,  assumed  to  have 
been  made  with  Abraham,  was  further 
assumed  to  have  been  renewed  to  Moses. 
[132] 


JEHOVAH 

The  resulting  poetry  was  enveloped 
in  a  romance  of  which  Continental 
scholarship  has  discovered  two  versions, 
woven  together,  perhaps  by  Ezra,  into  a 
single  tale. 

"In  the  beginning  Elohim  created  the 
heaven  and  earth."  That  abrupt  decla- 
ration, presented  originally  in  but  one  of 
the  versions,  had  already  been  pro- 
nounced of  India  and  also  of  Ormuzd. 
The  Hebraic  announcement  alone  pre- 
vailed. It  emptied  the  firmament  of  its 
monsters,  dislodged  the  gods  from  the 
skies,  and  enthroned  there  a  deity  at  first 
multiple  but  subsequently  unique.  After- 
ward seraphs  and  saints  might  replace 
the  evaporated  imaginings  of  other  creeds ; 
Satan  might  create  a  world  of  his  own 
and  people  it  with  the  damned;  theology 
might  evolve  from  elder  faiths  a  newer 
trinity  and  set  it  like  a  diadem  in  space; 
[133] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

angels  and  archangels  might  refill  the 
devastated  heavens  of  the  past;  none  the 
less,  in  the  light  of  that  austere  pronounce- 
ment, for  a  moment  Israel  dwelled  in 
contemplation  of  the  Ideal. 

At  the  time  it  is  probable  that  the  story 
of  the  love  of  the  sons  of  Jahveh  for  the 
daughters  of  men,  together  with  the 
pastel  of  Eden  as  it  stands  to-day,  were 
not  contained  in  existing  accounts  of 
that  ideal.  These  legends,  which  re- 
garded as  legends  are  obviously  false,  but 
which,  construed  as  allegories,  may  be 
profoundly  true,  were  probably  not  dif- 
fused until  after  the  captivity,  when  Israel 
was  not  more  subtle,  that  is  not  possible, 
but,  by  reason  of  her  contact  with  Persia, 
more  wise. 

The  origin  of  evil  these  myths  related 
but  did  not  explain.  Since  then,  from 
no  church  has  there  come  an  adequate 
[134] 


JEHOVAH 

explanation  of  the  malediction  under 
which  man  is  supposed  to  labour  because 
of  the  natural  propensities  of  beings  that 
never  were.  That  explanation  these 
myths,  which  orthodoxy  has  gravely, 
though  sometimes  reluctantly,  accepted, 
both  provide  and  conceal.  They  date 
possibly  from  the  Ormuzdian  revelation: 
"In  the  beginning  was  the  living 
Word." 

John,  or  more  exactly  his  homonym, 
repeated  the  pronouncement,  adding: 
"The  word  was  made  flesh."  But,  save 
for  a  mention  of  the  glory  which  he  had 
before  the  world  was,  he  omitted  to 
further  follow  the  thought  of  Ormuzd, 
who,  in  describing  paradise  to  Zara- 
thrustra,  likened  it,  in  every  way,  to 
heaven.  There  the  first  beings  were, 
exempt  from  physical  necessities,  pure 
intelligences,  naked  as  the  compilers  of 
[135] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

Genesis  translated,  naked  and  unashamed, 
but  naked  and  unashamed  because  in- 
corporeal, unincarnate  and  clothed  in 
light,  a  vestment  which  they  exchanged 
for  a  garment  of  flesh,  coats  of  skin  as  it 
is  in  Genesis,  when,  descended  on  earth, 
their  intelligence,  previously  luminous, 
swooned  in  the  senses  of  man. 

In  Egypt,  the  harper  going  out  from 
Amenti  sang:  "Life  is  death  in  a  land  of 
darkness,  death  is  life  in  a  land  of  light." 
There  perhaps  is  the  origin  of  evil. 
There  too  perhaps  is  its  cure.  But  the 
view  accepted  there  too  is  pre-existence 
and  persistence,  a  doctrine  blasphemous 
to  the  Jew  as  it  was  to  the  Assyrian,  to 
whom  the  gods  alone  were  immortal,  and 
to  whom,  in  consequence,  immortal  beings 
would  be  gods.  In  the  creed  of  both, 
man  was  essentially  evanescent.  To  the 
Hebrew,  he  lived  a  few,  brief  days  and 
[136] 


JEHOVAH 

then  went  down  into  silence,  where  no 
remembrance  is.  There,  gathered  among 
the  Refaim  to  his  fathers,  he  remained 
forever,  unheeded  by  God. 

The  conception,  passably  rationalistic 
and  not  impossibly  correct,  veiled  the 
beautiful  allegory  that  was  latent  in  the 
Eden  myth.  It  had  the  further  defect, 
or  the  additional  advantage,  of  eliminat- 
ing any  theory  of  future  punishment  and 
reward.  In  lieu  of  anything  of  the  kind, 
there  was  a  doctrine  that  evil,  in  produc- 
ing evil,  automatically  punished  itself. 
The  doctrine  is  incontrovertible.  But, 
for  corollary,  went  the  fallacy  that  virtue 
is  its  own  reward.  Against  that  idea 
Job  protested  so  energetically  that  me- 
diaeval monks  were  afraid  to  read  what 
he  wrote.  Yet  it  was  perhaps  in  demon- 
stration of  the  real  significance  of  the 
allegory  that  a  spiritualistic  doctrine  — 
[137] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

always  an  impiety  to  the  orthodox  —  was 
insinuated  by  the  Pharisees  and  instilled 
by  the  Christ. 

The  basis  of  it  rested  perhaps  partially 
in  the  idealism  of  the  prophets.  The 
clamour  of  their  voices  awoke  the  dead. 
It  transformed  the  skies.  It  transfigured 
Jahveh.  It  divested  him  of  attributes 
that  were  human.  It  outlined  others 
that  were  divine.  It  awoke  not  merely 
the  dead,  but  the  consciousness  that  a 
god  that  had  a  proper  name  could  not  be 
the  true  one.  Thereafter  mention  of  it 
was  avoided.  The  vowels  were  dropped. 
It  became  unpronounceable,  therefore  in- 
communicable. For  it  was  substituted 
the  term  vaguer,  and  therefore  more 
exact,  of  Lord,  one  in  whose  service  were 
fulfilled  the  words  of  Isaiah:  "I  am  the 
first  and  I  am  the  last,  and  beside  me 
there  is  no  God." 

[138] 


JEHOVAH 

In  the  marvel  of  that  miraculous  reali- 
zation were  altitudes  hitherto  undreamed, 
peaks  from  whose  summits  there  was 
discernible  but  the  valleys  beneath,  and 
another  height  on  which  stood  the  Son 
of  man.  Yet  marvellous  though  the  reali- 
zation was,  instead  of  diminishing,  it  in- 
creased. It  did  not  pass.  It  was  not 
forgot.  Ceaselessly  it  augmented. 

In  the  Scriptures  there  are  many  mar- 
vels. That  perhaps  is  the  greatest.  Amon, 
originally  an  obscure  provincial  god  of 
Thebes,  became  the  supreme  divinity 
of  Egypt.  Bel,  originally  a  local  god  of 
Nippur,  became  in  Babylon  Lord  of 
Hosts.  But  Jahveh,  originally  the  tute- 
lary god  of  squalid  nomads,  became  the 
Deity  of  Christendom.  The  fact  is  one 
that  any  scholarship  must  admit.  It  is 
the  indisputable  miracle  of  the  Bible. 

[139] 


I 


VI 

ZEUS 

N  Judea,  when  Jahveh  was  addressed, 
he  answered,  if  at  all,  with  a  thunder- 
clap. Since  then  he  has  ceased  to  reply. 
Zeus  was  more  complaisant.  One  might 
enter  with  him  into  the  intimacy  of  the 
infinite.  The  father  of  the  Graces,  the 
Muses,  the  Hours,  it  was  natural  that  he 
should  be  debonair.  But  he  had  other 
children.  Among  them  were  Litai,  the 
Prayers.  In  the  Vedas,  where  Zeus  was 
born,  the  Prayers  upheld  the  skies. 
Lame  and  less  lofty  in  Greece,  they  could 
but  listen  and  intercede. 

The  detail  is  taken  from  Homer.  In 
his  Ionian  Pentateuch  is  the  statement 
[140] 


ZEUS 

that  beggars  are  sent  by  Zeus,  that  who- 
ever stretches  a  hand  is  respectable  in  his 
eyes,  that  the  mendicant  who  is  repulsed 
may  perhaps  be  a  god  l  —  suggestions 
which,  afterward,  were  superiorly  re- 
sumed in  the  dictum:  "Inasmuch  as  ye 
have  done  it  unto  the  least  of  these  my 
brethren,  ye  have  done  it  unto  me." 

The  Litai  were  not  alone  in  their  offices. 
There  were  the  oracles  of  Delphi,  of 
Trophonios  and  of  Mopsos,  where  one 
might  converse  with  any  divinity,  even 
with  Pan,  who  was  a  very  great  god. 
But  Olympos  was  neighbourly.  It  was 
charming  too.  There  was  unending 
spring  there,  eternal  youth,  immortal 
beauty,  the  harmonies  of  divine  honey- 
moons, the  ideal  in  a  golden  dream; 
a  stretch  of  crystal  parapets,  from  which, 
leaning  and  laughing,  radiant  goddesses 

1  Odyssey,  xviii.  485,  v.  447,  xiv.  56. 
[141] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

and  resplendent  gods  looked  down,  and 
to  whom  a  people,  adolescent  still,  looked 
up. 

In  that  morning  of  delight  fear  was 
absent,  mystery  was  replaced  by  joy. 
The  pageantry  of  the  hours  may  have 
been  too  near  to  nature  to  know  of  shame, 
it  was  yet  too  close  to  the  divine  to  know 
of  hate.  Man,  then,  for  the  first  time, 
loved  what  he  worshipped  and  worshipped 
what  he  loved.  His  brilliant  and  musical 
Bible  moved  his  heart  without  torment- 
ing it.  It  conducted  but  did  not  con- 
strain. It  taught  him  that  in  death  all 
are  equal  and  that  in  life  the  noble- 
minded  are  serene. 

In  the  Genesis  of  this  Bible  there  is  an 
account  of  a  golden  age  and  of  a  paradise 
into  which  evil  was  introduced  by  woman. 
The  account  is  Hesiod's,  to  whom  the 
Orient  had  furnished  the  details.  It  may 
[142] 


ZEUS 

be  that  both  erred.  If  ever  there  were  a 
golden  age  it  must  have  been  in  those 
days  when  heaven  was  on  earth  and, 
mingling  familiarly  with  men,  were  pro- 
cessions of  gods,  gods  of  love,  of  light,  of 
liberty,  thousands  of  them,  not  one  of 
whom  had  ever  heard  an  atheist's  voice. 
Related  to  humanity,  of  the  same  blood, 
sons  of  the  same  Aryan  mother,  they  dif- 
fered from  men  only  in  that  the  latter 
died  because  they  were  real,  while  they 
were  deathless  because  ideal. 

The  ideal  was  too  fair.  Presently 
Pallas  became  the  soul  of  Athens.  But 
meanwhile  from  the  East  there  strayed 
swarms  of  enigmatic  faces;  the  harlot 
handmaids  of  her  Celestial  Highness 
Ishtar,  Princess  of  Heaven;  the  mutilated 
priests  of  Tammuz  her  lover;  dual  con- 
ceptions that  resulted  in  Aphrodite  Pan- 
demos,  the  postures  of  Priapos,  the  leer  of 
[143] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

the  Lampsacene,  and,  with  them,  forms 
of  worship  comparable,  in  the  circum- 
adjacent  beauty,  to  latrinse  in  a  garden, 
ignoble  shapes  that  violated  the  candour 
of  maidens'  eyes,  but  with  which  Greece 
became  so  accustomed  that  on  them 
moral  aphorisms  were  engraved.  "In 
the  mind  of  Hellas,  these  things,"  Benan, 
with  his  usual  unctuousness,  declared, 
"awoke  but  pious  thoughts." 

Pious  at  heart  Hellas  was.  Even  art, 
which  now  is  wholly  profane,  with  her 
was  wholly  sacred.  The  sanctity  was 
due  to  its  perfection.  The  perfection 
was  such  that  imbeciles  who  fancy  that 
it  has  been  or  could  be  surpassed  show 
merely  that  they  know  nothing  about  it. 
At  Athens,  where  Pheidias  created  a 
palpable  Olympos,  Pallas  stood  colos- 
sally,  a  torch  in  her  hand,  a  lance  at  her 
shoulder,  a  shield  at  her  side,  a  plastron 
[144] 


ZEUS 

of  gold  on  her  immaculate  breast,  a 
golden  robe  about  her  ivory  form,  and 
on  her  immortal  brow  a  crown  of  gold, 
beneath  which,  sapphire  eyes,  that  saw 
and  foresaw,  glittered.  To-day  the  place 
where  the  marvellous  creation  stood  is 
vacant.  With  the  gorgeous  host  Pallas 
has  departed.  But  the  torch  she  held 
still  burns.  From  the  emptiness  of  her 
virginal  arms,  that  never  were  filled,  pro- 
ceeds all  civilization. 

Adjacently  at  Eleusis  was  Demeter. 
Pallas  was  the  soul  of  Greece.  Eleusis 
was  the  Jerusalem,  Demeter  the  Ma- 
donna. 

Demeter  —  the  earth,  the  universal 
mother  —  had,  in  a  mystic  hymen  with 
her  brother  Zeus,  conceived  Persephone. 
The  latter,  when  young  and  a  maiden, 
beckoned  perhaps  by  Eros,  wandered 
from  Olympos  and  was  gathering  flowers 
[145] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

when  Pluto,  borne  by  black  horses, 
erupted,  raped  her,  and  tore  her  away. 
The  cries  of  the  indignant  Demeter 
sterilized  the  earth.  To  assuage  her, 
Zeus  undertook  to  have  Persephone  re- 
covered, provided  that  in  Hades,  of  which 
Pluto  was  lord,  she  had  eaten  nothing. 
But  the  girl  had  —  a  pomegranate  grain. 
It  was  the  irrevocable.  Demeter  yielded, 
as  the  high  gods  had  to  yield,  to  what 
was  higher  than  they,  to  Destiny.  Mean- 
while, in  the  shadows  below,  Persephone 
was  transfigured. 

Thou  art  more  than  the  day  or  the  morrow,  the  seasons 

that  laugh  and  that  weep; 
For  these  give  joy  and  sorrow:  but  thou,  Proserpina, 

sleep.  .  .  . 

0  daughter  of  earth,  of  my  mother,  her  crown  and 

blossom  of  birth, 

1  am  also,  I  also,  thy  brother;  I  go  as  I  came  unto  earth. 
In  the  night  where  thine  eyes  are  as  moons  are  in  heaven, 

the  night  where  thou  art, 
[146] 


ZEUS 

Where  the  silence  is  more  than  all  tunes,  where  sleep 

overflows  from  the  heart,  .  .  . 
And  the  murmur  of  spirits  that  sleep  in  the  shadow  of 

gods  from  afar 
Grows  dim  in  thine  ears  and  deep  as  the  deep  dim  soul 

of  a  star. 
In  the  sweet  low  light  of  thy  face,  under  heavens  un- 

trod  by  the  sun, 
Let  my  soul  with  their  souls  find  place  and  forget  what 

was  done  or  undone. 
Thou  art  more  than  the  gods  that  number  the  days 

of  our  temporal  breath 

For  these  give  labour  and  slumber;  but  thou,  Proser- 
pina, death. 

Like  Hesiod,  Swinburne  erred,  though 
perhaps  intentionally,  as  poets  should,  for 
the  greater  glory  of  the  Muses.  Per- 
sephone brought  not  death  but  life.  The 
aisles  of  despair  she  filled  with  hope. 
Transfigured  herself,  Pluto  she  trans- 
formed. She  changed  what  had  been 
hell  into  what  was  to  be  purgatory.  It 
[147] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

was  not  yet  Elysium,  but  it  was  no  longer 
Hades.  Plato  said  that  those  who  were 
in  her  world  had  no  wish  at  all  for 
this. 

It  is  for  that  reason  that  Demeter  is  the 
Madonna  of  Greece,  as  her  ethereal 
daughter  was  the  saviour.  The  myth  of 
it  all,  brought  by  Pythagoras  from  Egypt 
is  very  old.  Known  in  Memphis,  it  was 
known  too  in  Babylon,  perhaps  before 
Memphis  was.  But  the  legend  of  Isis 
and  that  of  Ishtar  —  both  of  whom  de- 
cended  into  hell  —  lack  the  transparent 
charm  which  this  idyl  unfolds  and  of 
which  the  significance  was  revealed  only 
to  initiate  in  epiphanies  at  Eleusis. 

Before  these  sacraments  Greece  stood, 
a  finger  to  her  lips.  Yet  the  whispers 
from  them  that  have  reached  us,  while 
furtive  perhaps,  are  clear.  They  fur- 
nished the  poets  with  notes  that  are 
[148] 


ZEUS 

resonant  still.  They  lifted  the  drama  to 
heights  that  astound.  Even  in  the  fancy 
balls  of  Aristophanes,  where  men  were 
ribald  and  the  gods  were  mocked,  sud- 
denly, in  the  midst  of  the  orgy,  laughter 
ceased,  obscenities  were  hushed.  Afar 
a  hymn  resounded.  It  was  the  chorus 
of  the  Initiate  going  measuredly  by. 

The  original  mysteries  were  Hermetic. 
Enterable  only  after  a  prolonged  novi- 
tiate, the  adept  then  beheld  an  unfolding 
of  the  theosophy  of  the  soul.  In  visions, 
possibly  ecstatic,  he  saw  the  series  of  its 
incarnations,  the  seven  cycles  through 
which  it  passed,  the  Ship  of  a  Million 
Years  on  which  the  migrations  are  effected 
and  on  which,  at  last,  from  the  Valley  of 
the  Shadow  of  Death,  it  sails  to  its  primal 
home. 

That  home  was  colour,  its  sustenance 
light.  There,  in  ethereal  evolutions,  its 
[149] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

incarnations  began.  At  first  unsubstan- 
tial and  wholly  ineffable,  these  turned  for 
it  every  object  into  beauty,  every  sound 
into  joy.  Without  needs,  from  beatitude 
to  beatitude  blissfully  it  floated.  But, 
subjected  to  the  double  attraction  of 
matter  and  of  sin,  the  initiate  saw  the 
memories  and  attributes  of  its  spirituality 
fade.  He  saw  it  flutter,  and  fluttering 
sink.  He  saw  that  in  sinking  it  enveloped 
itself  in  garments  that  grew  heavier  at 
each  descent.  Through  the  denser  cloth- 
ing he  saw  the  desires  of  the  flesh  pulsate. 
He  saw  them  force  it  lower,  still  lower, 
until,  fallen  into  its  earthly  tenement,  it 
swooned  in  the  senses  of  man.  From  the 
chains  of  that  prison  he  learned  that 
the  soul's  one  escape  was  in  a  recovery  of 
the  memory  of  what  it  had  been  when  it 
was  other  than  what  it  had  become. 
That  memory  the  mysteries  provided. 

[150] 


ZEUS 

Those  of  Eleusis  differed  from  the  Egyp- 
tian only  in  detail.  At  Eleusis,  in  lieu  of 
visions,  there  were  tableaux.  Persephone, 
beckoned  by  desire,  straying  then  from 
Olympos,  afterward  fainting  in  the  arms 
of  Pluto,  but  subsequently,  while  pre- 
paring her  own  reascension,  saving  and 
embellishing  all  that  approach,  was  the 
symbol,  in  an  Hellenic  setting,  of  the  fall 
and  redemption  of  man. 

The  human  tragedy  thus  portrayed 
was  the  luminous  counterpart  of  the  dark 
dramas  that  Athens  beheld.  There,  in 
the  theatre  —  which  itself  was  a  church 
with  the  stage  for  [pulpit  —  man,  blinded 
by  passions,  the  Fates  pursued  and 
Destiny  felled. 

The  sombre  spectacle  was  inexplicable. 

At  Eleusis  was  enlightenment.   "Eskato 

Bebeloi"  —  Out  from  here,  the  profane 

—  the  heralds  shouted  as  the  mysteries 

[151] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

began.  "Konx  ompax"  —  Go  in  peace 
—  they  called  when  the  epiphanies  were 
completed. 

In  peace  the  initiate  went,  serenely,  it  is 
said,  ever  after.  From  them  the  load  of 
ignorance  was  lifted.  But  what  their  im- 
pressions were  is  unrecorded.  They  were 
bound  to  secrecy.  No  one  could  learn 
what  occurred  without  being  initiated,  or 
without  dying.  For  death  too  is  initiation. 

The  mysteries  were  schools  of  immor- 
tality. They  plentifully  taught  many  a 
lesson  that  Christianity  afterward  in- 
stilled. But  their  drapery  was  perhaps 
over  ornate.  Truth  does  not  need  any. 
Truth  always  should  be  charming.  Yet 
always  it  should  be  naked  as  well.  About 
it  the  mysteries  hung  a  raiment  that  was 
beautiful,  but  of  which  the  rich  embroi- 
deries obscured.  The  mysteries  could 
not  have  been  more  fascinating,  that  is 
[152] 


ZEUS 

not  possible,  but,  the  myths  removed,  in 
simple  nudity  they  would  have  been  more 
clear.  Doubtless  it  was  for  that  very 
reason,  in  order  that  they  might  not  be 
transparent,  that  the  myths  were  em- 
ployed. It  is  for  that  very  reason,  per- 
haps, that  Christianity  also  adopted  a  few. 
Yet  at  least  from  cant  they  were  free. 
Among  the  multiple  divinities  of  Greece, 
hypocrisy  was  the  unknown  god.  Con- 
sideration of  the  others  is,  to-day,  usually 
effected  through  the  pages  of  Ovid.  One 
might  as  well  study  Christianity  in  the 
works  of  Voltaire.  Christianity's  bright- 
est days  were  in  the  dark  ages.  The 
splendid  glamour  of  them  that  persists 
is  due  to  many  causes,  among  which,  in 
minor  degree,  may  be  the  compelling 
glare  of  Greek  genius.  That  glare,  veiled 
in  the  mysteries,  philosophy  reflects. 
Philosophy  is  but  the  love  of  wisdom. 
[153] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

It  began  with  Socrates.  He  had  no  be- 
lief in  the  gods.  The  man  who  has  none 
may  be  very  religious.  But  though  Soc- 
rates did  not  believe  in  the  gods  he  did 
not  deny  them.  He  did  what  perhaps 
was  worse.  He  ignored  their  perfectly 
poetic  existence.  He  was  put  to  death 
for  it,  though  only  at  the  conclusion  of  a 
long  promenade  during  which  he  delivered 
Athenian  youths  of  their  intelligence. 
Facility  in  the  operation  may  have  been 
inherited.  Socrates  was  the  son  of  a 
midwife.  His  own  progeny  consisted  in 
a  complete  transfiguration  of  Athenian 
thought.  He  told  of  an  Intelligence,  su- 
preme, ethical,  just,  seeing  all,  hearing 
all,  governing  all;  a  creator  made  not 
after  the  image  of  man  but  of  the  soul, 
and  visible  only  in  the  conscience.  It 
was  for  that  he  died.  There  was  no 
such  god  on  Olympos. 
[154] 


ZEUS 

There  was  an  additional  indictment. 
Socrates  was  accused  of  perverting  the 
jeunesse  doree.  At  a  period  when,  every- 
where, save  only  in  Israel,  the  abnormal 
was  usual,  Socrates  was  almost  insultingly 
chaste.  The  perversion  of  which  he  was 
accused  was  not  of  that  order.  It  was 
that  of  inciting  lads  to  disobey  their 
parents  when  the  latter  opposed  what 
he  taught. 

"I  am  come  to  set  a  man  against  his 
father,"  it  is  written  in  Matthew.  The 
mission  of  Socrates  was  the  same.  Be- 
cause of  it  he  died.  He  was  the  first 
martyr.  But  his  death  was  overwhelm- 
ing in  its  simplicity.  Even  in  fairyland 
there  has  been  nothing  more  calm.  By 
way  of  preparation  he  said  to  his  judges : 
"Were  you  to  offer  to  acquit  me  on  con- 
dition that  I  no  longer  profess  what  I  be- 
lieve, I  would  answer;  *  Athenians,  I 
[155] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

honour  and  I  love  you,  but  a  god  has 
commanded  me  and  that  god  I  will  obey, 
rather  than  you." 

In  the  speech  was  irony,  with  which 
Athens  was  familiar.  But  it  also  dis- 
played a  conception,  wholly  new,  that  of 
maintaining  at  any  cost  the  truth.  The 
novelty  must  have  charmed.  When  Peter 
and  the  apostles  were  arraigned  before 
the  Sanhedrin,  their  defence  consisted 
in  the  very  words  that  Socrates  had  used : 
"  We  should  obey  God  rather  than  man."  * 

Socrates  wrote  nothing.  The  Buddha 
did  not  either.  Neither  did  the  Christ. 
These  had  their  evangelists.  Socrates 
had  also  disciples  who,  as  vehicle  for  his 
ideas,  employed  the  nightingale  tongue 
of  beauty  into  which  the  Law  and  the 
Prophets  were  translated  by  the  Septua- 
gint  and  into  which  the  Gospels  were  put 

'Acts  v.  29. 
[156] 


ZEUS 

It  would  be  irreverent  to  suggest  that 
the  latter  are  in  any  way  indebted  to 
Socratic  inspiration.  It  would  be  irrele- 
vant as  well.  For,  while  the  Intelligence 
that  Socrates  preached  differed  as  much 
from  the  volage  and  voluptuous  Zeus  as 
the  God  of  Christendom  differs  from  the 
Jahveh  of  Job,  yet,  in  a  divergence  so 
wide,  an  idealist,  very  poor  except  in 
ideas ;  a  teacher  killed  by  those  who  knew 
not  what  they  did;  a  philosopher  that 
drained  the  cup  without  even  asking  that 
it  pass  from  him ;  a  mere  reformer,  though 
dangerous  perhaps  as  every  reformer  worth 
the  name  must  be;  but,  otherwise,  a  mere 
man  like  any  other,  only  a  little  better, 
could  obviously  have  had  no  share.  For 
reasons  not  minor  but  major,  Plato  could 
have  had  none  either. 

It  is  related  that  a  Roman  invader, 
sank  back,  stricken  with  deisidaimonia  — 
[157] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

the  awe  that  the  gods  inspired  —  at  the 
sight  of  the  Pheidian  Zeus.  It  is  with 
a  wonder  not  cognate  certainly,  yet  in  a 
measure  relative,  that  one  considers  what 
Socrates  must  have  been  if  millennia  have 
gone  without  producing  one  mind  ap- 
proaching that  of  his  spiritual  heir.  It 
was  uranian ;  but  not  disassociated  from 
human  things. 

Plato,  like  his  master,  was  but  a  man 
in  whom  the  ideal  was  intuitive,  perhaps 
the  infernal  also.  In  the  gardens  of  the 
Academe  and  along  the  banks  of  the 
Ilissus,  he  announced  a  Last  Judgment. 
The  announcement,  contained  in  the 
Phcedo,  had  for  supplement  a  picture  that 
may  have  been  Persian,  of  the  righteous 
ascending  to  heaven  and  the  wicked  de- 
scending to  hell.  In  the  Laws,  the  pic- 
ture was  annotated  with  a  statement  to 
the  effect  that  whatever  a  man  may  do, 
[158] 


ZEUS 

there  is  an  eye  that  sees  him,  a  memory 
that  registers  and  retains.  In  the  Re- 
public he  declared  that  afflictions  are 
blessings  in  disguise.  But  his  "Repub- 
lic," a  Utopian  commonwealth,  was  not, 
he  said,  of  this  world,  adding  in  the 
Phcedo,  that  few  are  chosen  though  many 
are  called. 

The  mystery  of  the  Catholicism  of  the 
Incas,  reported  back  to  the  Holy  Office, 
was  there  defined  as  an  artifice  of  the 
devil.  With  finer  circumspection,  Chris- 
tian Fathers  attributed  the  denser  mystery 
of  Greek  philosophy  to  the  inspiration  of 
God. 

Certainly  it  is  ample.  As  exemplified 
by  Plato  it  has,  though,  its  limitations. 
There  is  no  charity  in  it.  Plato  preached 
humility,  but  there  is  none  in  his  sermons. 
His  thought  is  a  winged  thing,  as  the 
thought  of  a  poet  ever  should  be.  But  in 
[159] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

the  expression  of  it  he  seems  smiling, 
disdainful,  indifferent  as  a  statue  to  the 
poverties  of  the  heart.  That  too,  perhaps, 
is  as  it  should  be.  The  high  muse  wears 
a  radiant  peplum.  Anxiety  is  banished 
from  the  minds  that  she  haunts.  Then, 
also,  if,  in  the  nectar  of  Plato's  speech, 
compassion  is  not  an  ingredient,  it  may  be 
because,  in  his  violet-crowned  city,  it  was 
strewn  open-handed  through  the  beauti- 
ful streets.  There,  public  malediction 
was  visited  on  anyone  that  omitted  to 
guide  a  stranger  on  his  way. 

Israel  was  too  strictly  monotheistic  to 
raise  an  altar  to  Pity,  the  rest  of  antiquity 
too  cruel.  In  Athens  there  was  one.  In 
addition  there  were  missions  for  the  needy, 
asylums  for  the  infirm.  If  anywhere,  at 
that  period,  human  sympathy  existed,  it 
was  in  Greece.  The  aristocratic  silence 
of  Plato  may  have  been  due  to  that  fact. 
[160] 


ZEUS 

He  would  not  talk  of  the  obvious,  though 
he  did  of  the  vile.  In  one  of  his  books 
the  then  common  and  abnormal  concep- 
tion of  sexuality  was,  if  not  authorized, 
at  least  condoned.  It  is  conjectural,  how- 
ever, whether  the  conception  was  more 
monstrous  than  that  which  subsequent 
mysticity  evolved. 

Said  Ruysbroeck:  "The  mystic  carries 
her  soul  in  her  hand  and  gives  it  to  whom- 
soever she  wishes."  Said  St.  Francis  of 
Sales:  "The  soul  draws  to  itself  motives 
of  love  and  delectates  in  them."  What 
the  gift  and  what  the  delectation  were, 
other  saints  have  described. 

Marie  de  la  Croix  asserted  that  in  the 
arms  of  the  celestial  Spouse  she  swam 
in  an  ocean  of  delight.  Concerning  that 
Spouse,  Marie  Alacoque  added:  "Like 
the  most  passionate  of  lovers  he  made  me 
understand  that  I  should  taste  what  is 
[161] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

sweetest  in  the  suavity  of  caresses,  and 
indeed,  so  poignant  were  they,  that  I 
swooned."  The  ravishments  which  St. 
Theresa  experienced  she  expressed  in 
terms  of  abandoned  precision.  Mme. 
Guyon  wrote  so  carnally  of  the  divine 
that  Bossuet  exclaimed;  "Seigneur,  if  I 
dared,  I  would  pray  that  a  seraph  with  a 
flaming  sword  might  come  and  purify 
my  lips  sullied  by  this  recital."1 

Augustin  pleasantly  remarked  that  we 
are  all  born  for  hell.  One  need  not  agree 
with  him.  In  the  presence  of  the  pos- 
sibly monstrous  and  the  impossibly  blas- 
phemous, there  is  always  a  recourse.  It 
is  to  turn  away,  though  it  be  to  Zeus,  a  be- 
lief in  whom,  however  stupid,  is  ennobling 
beside  the  turpitudes  that  Christian  mys- 
ticism produced. 

At  Athens,  meanwhile,  the  religion  of 

1  Relation  sur  le  Quietisme. 
[162] 


ZEUS 

State  persisted.  So  also  did  philosophy. 
When,  occasionally,  the  two  met,  the 
latter  bowed.  That  was  sufficient.  Re- 
ligion exacted  respect,  not  belief.  It 
was  not  a  faith,  it  was  a  law,  one  that 
for  its  majesty  was  admired  and  for  its 
poetry  was  beloved.  In  the  deification 
of  whatever  is  exquisite  it  was  but  an 
artistic  cult.  The  real  Olympos  was  the 
Pantheon.  The  other  was  fading  away. 
Deeper  and  deeper  it  was  sinkingback  into 
the  golden  dream  from  which  it  had  sprung. 
Further  and  further  the  crystal  parapets 
were  retreating.  Dimmer  and  more  dim 
the  gorgeous  host  became.  In  words  of 
perfect  piety  Epicurus  pictured  them  in  the 
felicity  of  the  ideal.  There,  they  had  no 
heed  of  man,  no  desire  for  worship,  no  wish 
for  prayer.  It  was  unnecessary  even  to 
think  of  them.  Decorously,  with  every 
homage,  they  were  being  deposed. 
[163] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

But  if  Epicurus  was  decorous,  Eve- 
merus  was  devout.  It  was  his  endeavour, 
he  said,  not  to  undermine  but  to  fortify. 
The  gods  he  described  as  philanthropists 
whom  a  grateful  world  had  deified. 
Zeus  had  waged  a  sacrilegious  war  against 
his  father.  Aphrodite  was  a  harlot  and 
a  procuress.  The  others  were  equally 
commendable.  Once  they  had  all  lived. 
Since  then  all  had  died.  Evemerus  had 
seen  their  tombs. 

One  should  not  believe  him.  Their 
parapets  are  dimmer,  perhaps,  but  from 
them  still  they  lean  and  laugh.  They 
are  immortal  as  the  hexameters  in  which 
their  loves  unfold.  Yet,  oddly  enough, 
presently  the  oracle  of  Delphi  strangled. 
In  his  cavern  Trophonios  was  gagged. 
The  voice  of  Mopsos  withered. 

That  is  nothing.  On  the  Ionian,  the 
captain  of  a  ship  heard  some  one  call- 
[164] 


ZEUS 

ing  loudly  at  him  from  the  sea.  The 
passengers,  who  were  at  table,  looked  out 
astounded.  Again  the  loud  voice  called: 
"  Captain,  when  you  reach  shore  announce 
that  the  great  god  Pan  is  dead."1 

It  may  be  that  it  was  true.  It  may  be 
that  after  Pan  the  others  departed.  When 
Paul  reached  Athens  he  found  a  denuded 
Pantheon,  a  vacant  Olympos,  skies  more 
empty  still. 


1  Plutarch:  de  Oracul.  defect.  14. 
[165] 


VII 

JUPITER 

THE  name  of  the  national  deity  of 
Israel  is  unpronounceable.  The 
name  of  the  national  divinity  of  Rome  is 
unknown.  To  all  but  the  hierophants 
it  was  a  secret.  For  uttering  it  a  senator 
was  put  to  death.  But  Tullius  Hostilius 
erected  temples  to  Fear  and  to  Pallor. 
It  may  have  been  Fright.  The  conjec- 
ture is  supported  by  the  fact  that,  as  was 
usual,  Rome  had  any  number  of  deified 
epithets,  as  she  had  also  a  quantity  of 
little  bits  of  gods.  These  latter  greatly 
amused  the  Christian  Fathers.  Among 
them  was  Alemona,  who,  in  homely  Eng- 
lish, was  Wet-nurse. 

[166] 


JUPITER 

Tertullian,  perhaps  naively,  remarked: 
"Superstition  has  invented  these  deities 
for  whom  we  have  substituted  angels." 
In  addition  to  the  diva  mater  Alemona 
was  the  divus  pater  Vaticanus,  the  holy 
father  Vatican,  who  assisted  at  a  child's 
first  cry.  There  was  the  equally  holy 
father  Fabulin,  who  attended  him  in  his 
earliest  efforts  at  speech.  Neither  of 
them  had  anything  else  to  do. 

Pavor  had.  At  thunder,  at  lightning, 
at  a  meteor,  at  moisture  on  a  wall,  at  no 
matter  what,  at  silence  even,  the  descend- 
ants of  a  she-wolf's  nursling  quailed. 
They  lived  in  a  panic.  In  panic  the 
gods  were  born.  It  is  but  natural,  per- 
haps, that  Fright  should  have  been  held 
supreme.  The  other  gods,  mainly  divini- 
ties of  prey  and  of  havoc,  were  lustreless 
as  the  imaginations  that  conceived  them. 
Prosaic,  unimaged,  without  poetry  or 
[167] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

myth,  they  dully  persisted  until  pedlars 
appeared  with  Hellenic  legends  and  wares. 
To  their  tales  Rome  listened.  Then 
eidolons  of  the  Olympians  became  natu- 
ralized there.  Zeus  was  transformed  into 
Jupiter,  Aphrodite  into  Venus,  Pallas 
into  Minerva,  Demeter  into  Ceres,  and 
all  of  them  —  and  with  them  all  the 
others  —  into  an  irritable  police.  The 
Greek  gods  enchanted,  those  of  Rome 
alarmed.  Plutarch  said  that  they  were 
indignant  if  one  presumed  to  so  much  as 
sneeze. 

Worship,  consequently,  was  a  neces- 
sary precaution,  an  insurance  against 
divine  risks,  a  matter  of  business  in 
which  the  devout  bargained  with  the 
divine.  Ovid  represented  Numa  trying 
to  elude  the  exigencies  of  Jove.  The 
latter  had  demanded  the  sacrifice  of  a 
head.  "You  shall  have  a  cabbage," 
[168] 


JUPITER 

said  the  king.  "I  mean  something  hu- 
man." "Some  hairs  then."  "No,  I 
want  something  alive."  "We  will  give 
you  a  pretty  little  fish."  Jupiter  laughed 
and  yielded.  That  was  much  later,  after 
Lucretius,  in  putting  Epicurus  into  verse, 
had  declared  religion  to  be  the  mother  of 
sin.  By  that  time  Fear  and  Pallor  had 
struck  terror  into  the  very  marrow  of 
barbarian  bones.  Fright  was  a  god  more 
serviceable  than  Zeus.  With  him  Rome 
conquered  the  world.  Yet  in  the  con- 
quest Fright  became  Might  and  the 
latter  an  effulgence  of  Jove's. 

Jove  was  magnificent.  In  the  Capitol 
he  throned  so  augustly  that  we  swear  by 
him  still.  Like  Rome  he  is  immortal. 
But  Pavor,  that  had  faded  into  him,  was 
never  invoked.  The  reason  was  not 
sacerdotal,  it  was  political.  Rome  never 
imposed  her  gods  on  the  quelled.  With 
[169] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

superior  tact  she  lured  their  gods  from 
them.  At  any  siege,  that  was  her  first 
device.  To  it  she  believed  her  victories 
were  due.  It  was  to  avoid  possible 
reprisals  and  to  remain  invincible,  that 
her  own  national  divinity  she  so  carefully 
concealed  that  the  name  still  is  a  secret. 
With  the  gods,  Rome  gathered  the  creeds 
of  the  world,  set  them  like  fountains 
among  her  hills,  and  drank  of  their  sacred 
waters.  Her  early  deity  is  unknown. 
But  the  secret  of  her  eternity  is  in  the 
religions  that  she  absorbed.  It  was  these 
that  made  her  immortal. 

To  that  immortality  the  obscure  god  of 
an  obscure  people  contributed  largely, 
perhaps,  but  perhaps,  too,  not  uniquely. 
Jahveh  might  have  remained  unperceived 
behind  the  veil  of  the  sanctuary  had  not 
his  altar  been  illuminated  by  lights  from 
other  shrines.  In  the  early  days  of  the 
[170] 


JUPITER 

empire,  Rome  was  fully  aware  of  the 
glamour  of  Amon,  of  the  star  of  Ormuzd, 
Brahm's  cerulean  lotos  and  the  rainbow 
heights  of  Bel-Marduk.  But  in  the 
splendour  of  Jove  all  these  were  opaque. 
Jupiter,  always  imposing,  was  gran- 
diose then.  His  thoughts  were  vast  as 
the  sky.  In  a  direct  revelation  to  Vergil 
he  said  of  his  chosen  people:  "I  have  set 
no  limits  to  their  conquest  or  its  duration. 
The  empire  I  have  given  them  shall  be 
without  end."1  Hebrew  prophets  had 
spoken  similarly.  Vergil  must  have  been 
more  truly  inspired.  The  Roman  empire, 
nominally  holy,  figuratively  still  exists. 
Yet  fulfilment  of  the  prophecy  is  due 
perhaps  less  to  the  God  of  the  Gentiles 
than  to  the  God  of  the  Jews.  Though 
perhaps  also  it  may  be  permissible  to  dis- 
cern in  the  latter  a  transfiguration  of 

1  ^Eneid  i.  278. 
[171] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

Jove,  who  originally  Zeus,  and  primarily 
not  Hellenic  but  Hindu,  ultimately  be- 
came supreme.  After  the  terrific  struggle 
which  resulted  in  that  final  metamor- 
phosis, Jerusalem,  disinherited,  saw 
Rome  the  spiritual  capital  of  the  globe. 

Jerusalem  was  not  a  home  of  logic. 
Rome  was  the  city  of  law.  That  law, 
cold,  inflexible,  passionless  as  a  sword 
and  quite  as  effective,  Rome  brandished 
at  philosophy.  It  is  said  that  the  intel- 
lectual gymnastics  of  Greece  were  dis- 
pleasing to  her  traditions.  It  is  more 
probable  that  augurs  had  foreseen  or 
oracles  had  foretold  that  philosophy  would 
divest  her  of  the  sword,  and  with  it  of  her 
sceptre  and  her  might.  Ideas  cannot  be 
decapitated.  Only  ridicule  can  demolish 
them.  Philosophy,  mistress  of  irony,  re- 
sisted while  nations  fell.  It  was  phi- 
losophy that  first  undermined  established 
[172] 


JUPITER 

creeds  and  then  led  to  the  pursuit  of  new 
ones.  Yet  it  may  be  that  a  contributing 
cause  was  a  curious  theory  that  the  world 
was  to  end.  Foretold  in  the  Brahmanas, 
in  the  Avesta  and  in  the  Eddas,  prob- 
ably it  was  in  the  Sibylline  Books.  If  not, 
the  subsequent  Church  may  have  so 
assumed. 

Dies  ire,  dies  ilia, 
Solvet  sseclum  in  f  avilla, 
Teste  David  cum  Sibylla. 

Not  alone  David  and  the  Sibyl  but 
Etruscan  seers  had  seen  in  the  skies  that 
the  tenth  and  last  astronomical  cycle  had 
begun.1  Plutarch,  in  his  life  of  Sylla, 
testified  to  the  general  belief  in  an  ap- 
proaching cataclysm.  Lucretius  an- 
nounced that  at  any  moment  it  might 
occur.2  That  was  in  the  latter  days  of 

1  Censorinus:  De  die  nat.  17. 

2  De  rerum  nat.,  v.  105. 

[173] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

the  republic.  In  the  early  days  of  the 
empire  the  theory  persisting  may  have 
induced  the  hope  of  a  saviour.  Suetonius 
said  that  nature  in  her  parturitions  was 
elaborating  a  king.1  Afterward  he  added 
that  such  was  Asia's  archaic  belief.2  Re- 
cent discoveries  have  verified  the  asser- 
tion. In  the  Akkadian  Epic  of  Dibbara 
a  messiah  was  foretold.3  That  epic,  an- 
terior to  a  cognate  Egyptian  prophecy,4 
anterior  also  to  the  Sibylline  Books,  was 
anterior  too  to  the  Hebrew  prophets  and 
necessarily  to  those  of  Rome. 

Among  these  was  Vergil.  In  the  fourth 
Eclogue  he  beheld  an  age  of  gold,  pre- 
ceded by  the  advent  on  earth  of  a  son  of 
Jove,  under  whose  auspices  the  last  traces 
of  sin  and  sorrow  were  to  disappear  and 
a  new  race  descend  from  heaven.  "  The 

1  In  Augusto,  74.  2  In  Vesp.  4. 

8  Jastrow:  op.  dt.  4See  back,  Chapter  HI. 

[174] 


JUPITER 

serpent  shall  die,"  he  declared,  adding: 
"The  time  is  at  hand." 

The  Eclogue  was  written  40  B.C.,  dur- 
ing the  consulate  of  Pallio,  whom  the  poet 
wished  perhaps  to  flatter.  Then  pres- 
ently Ovid  sang  the  deathless  soul  and 
Tibullus  gave  rendezvous  hereafter.  The 
atmosphere  dripped  with  wonders.  The 
air  became  charged  with  the  miraculous. 
At  stated  intervals  the  doors  of  temples 
opened  of  themselves.  Statues  perspired 
visibly.  There  was  a  book  that  explained 
the  mechanism  of  these  marvels.  It  in- 
terested nobody.  Prodigies  were  matters 
of  course. 

The  people  had  a  heaven,  also  a  hell, 
both  of  them  Greek,  a  purgatory  that 
may  have  been  Asiatic,  and,  pending  the 
advent  of  the  son  of  Jove,  in  Mithra  they 
could  have  had  a  redeemer.  Had  it  been 
desired,  Buddhism  could  have  supplied 
[175] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

gospels,  India  the  trinity,  Persia  the 
resurrection,  Egypt  the  life.  From  Iran 
could  have  been  obtained  an  Intelligence, 
sovereign,  unimaged,  and  just.  That  was 
unnecessary.  Long  since  Socrates  had 
displayed  it.  In  addition,  Epicurus  had 
told  of  an  ascension  of  heavens,  skies  be- 
yond the  sky,  worlds  without  number,  the 
many  mansions  of  a  later  faith. 

Meanwhile,  austerity  was  an  appanage 
of  the  stoics,  in  whose  faultless  code  the 
dominant  note  was  contempt  for  whatever 
is  base,  respect  for  all  that  is  noble.  A 
doctrine  of  great  beauty,  purely  Greek,  as 
was  everything  else  in  Rome  that  was 
beautiful,  its  heights  were  too  lofty  for 
the  vulgar.  It  appealed  only  to  the  let- 
tered, that  is  to  the  few,  to  the  infrequent 
disciples  of  Zeno  and  of  Cicero,  his  pro- 
phet, who,  Erasmus  said,  was  inspired  by 
God. 

[176] 


JUPITER 

It  may  be  that  Cicero  inspired  a  few  of 
God's  preachers.  The  latter  were  not 
yet  in  Rome.  Christ  had  not  come.  At 
that  period,  unique  in  history,  man  alone 
existed.  The  temples  were  thronged, 
but  the  skies  were  bare.  Cicero  knew 
that.  Elysium  and  Hades  were  as  chi- 
merical to  him  as  the  Epicurean  heavens. 
"People,"  he  said,  "talk  of  these  places 
as  though  they  had  been  there."  But  that 
which  was  superstition  to  him  he  re- 
garded as  beneficial  for  others,  who  had 
to  have  something  and  who  got  it,  in 
temples  where  a  sin  was  a  prayer. 

There  was  once  a  play  of  which  there 
has  survived  but  the  title:  The  Last  Will 
and  Testament  of  Defunct  Jupiter.  It 
appeared  in  the  days  of  Diocletian,  but  it 
might  have  appealed  when  Cicero  taught. 
Faith  then  had  fainted.  Fright  had 
ceased  to  build.  Worship  remained,  but 
[177] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

religion  had  gone.  The  gods  themselves 
were  departing.  The  epoch  itself  was 
apoplectic.  The  tramp  of  legions  was 
continuous.  Not  alone  the  skies  but  the 
world  was  in  a  ferment.  It  was  not  until 
a  diadem,  falling  from  Cleopatra's  golden 
bed,  rolled  to  the  feet  of  Augustus,  that 
the  gods  were  stayed  and  faith  revived. 

In  the  interim,  prisoners  had  been  de- 
ported from  Judea.  At  first  they  were 
slaves.  Subsequently  manumitted,  they 
formed  a  colony  that  in  the  high-viced 
city  resembled  Esther  in  the  seraglio  of 
Ahasuerus.  Rome,  amateur  of  cults,  al- 
ways curious  of  foreign  faiths,  might  have 
been  interested  in  Judaism.  It  had  many 
analogies  with  local  beliefs.  Its  adhe- 
rents awaited,  as  Rome  did,  a  messiah. 
They  awaited  too  a  golden  age.  For 
those  who  were  weary  of  philosophy,  they 
had  a  religion  in  which  there  was  none. 
[178] 


JUPITER 

For  those  to  whom  the  marvellous  ap- 
pealed, they  had  a  history  in  which 
miracles  were  a  string  of  pearls.  For 
those  who  were  sceptic  concerning  the 
post-mortem,  they  offered  blankness.  In 
addition,  their  god,  the  enemy  of  all 
others,  was  adapted  to  an  empire  that 
recognized  no  sovereignty  but  its  own. 
Readily  might  Rome  have  become  He- 
brew. But  then,  with  equal  ease,  she 
might  have  become  Egyptian. 

For  those  who  were  perhaps  afraid  of 
going  to  hell  and  yet  may  have  been 
equally  afraid  of  not  going  anywhere, 
Egypt  held  passports  to  a  land  of  light. 
Then  too,  the  gods  of  Egypt  were  friendly 
and  accessible.  They  mingled  familiarly 
with  those  of  Rome,  complaisantly  with 
the  deified  Caesars,  as  already  they  had 
with  the  pharaohs,  a  condescension,  pa- 
renthetically, that  did  not  protect  them 
[179] 


from  Tiberius,  who,  for  reasons  with 
which  religion  had  nothing  whatever  to 
do,  persecuted  the  Egyptians,  as  he  per- 
secuted also  the  Jews.  None  the  less, 
Rome,  weary  of  local  fictions,  might  have 
become  converted  to  foreign  ideas.  In  de- 
fault of  Syrian  or  Copt,  she  might  have  be- 
come Persian  as  already  she  was  Greek. 

Augustus  had  other  views.  Divinities, 
made  not  merely  after  the  image  of  man 
but  in  symbols  of  sin,  he  saluted.  With 
a  hand  usually  small,  but  in  this  instance 
tolerably  large,  he  re-established  them 
on  their  pedestals.  A  relapse  to  spiritual 
infancy  resulted.  It  was  what  he  sought. 
He  wanted  to  be  a  god  himself  and  he 
became  one.  His  power  and,  after  him, 
that  of  his  successors,  had  no  earthly 
limit,  no  restraint  human  or  divine.  It 
was  the  same  omnipotence  here  that  else- 
where Jupiter  wielded. 
[180] 


JUPITER 

Jupiter  had  flamens  who  told  him  the 
time  of  day.  He  had  others  that  read  to 
him.  For  his  amusement  there  were  mimes. 
For  his  delectation,  matrons  established 
themselves  in  the  Capitol  and  affected  to 
be  his  loves.  But  then  he  was  superb. 
Made  of  ivory,  painted  vermillion,  seated 
colossally  on  a  colossal  throne,  a  sceptre 
in  one  hand,  a  thunderbolt  in  the  other, 
a  radiating  gold  crown  on  his  august  head, 
and,  about  his  limbs,  a  shawl  of  Tyrian 
purple,  he  looked  every  inch  the  god. 

The  Caesars,  if  less  imposing,  were  more 
potent.  Their  hands,  in  which  there  was 
nothing  symbolic,  held  life  and  death, 
absolute  dominion  over  everything,  over 
every  one.  Jupiter  was  but  a  statue. 
They  alone  were  real,  alone  divine.  To 
them  incense  ascended.  At  their  feet 
libations  poured.  The  nectar  fumes  con- 
fused. Rome,  mad  as  they,  built  them 
[181] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

temples,  raised  them  shrines,  creating  for 
them  a  worship  that  they  accepted,  as 
only  their  due  perhaps,  but  in  which  their 
reason  fled.  In  accounts  of  the  epoch 
there  is  much  mention  of  citizens,  sena- 
tors, patricians.  Nominally  there  were 
such  people.  Actually  there  were  but 
slaves.  The  slaves  had  a  succession  of 
masters.  Among  them  was  a  lunatic, 
Caligula,  and  an  imbecile,  Claud.  There 
were  others.  There  was  Terror,  there 
was  Hatred,  there  was  Crime.  These 
last,  though  several,  were  yet  but  one. 
Collectively,  they  were  Nero. 

If  philosophy  ever  were  needed  it  was 
in  his  monstrous  day.  To  anyone,  at 
any  moment,  there  might  be  brought  the 
laconic  message:  Die.  In  republican 
Rome,  philosophy  separated  man  from 
sin.  At  that  period  it  was  perhaps  a 
luxury.  In  the  imperial  epoch  it  was  a 
[182] 


JUPITER 

necessity.  It  separated  man  from  life. 
The  philosophy  of  the  republic  Cicero 
expounded.  That  of  the  empire  Seneca 
produced. 

The  neo-stoicism  of  the  latter  sus- 
tained the  weak,  consoled  the  just.  It 
was  a  support  and  a  guide.  It  preached 
poverty.  It  condemned  wealth.  It 
deprecated  honours  and  pleasure.  It  in- 
culcated chastity,  humility,  and  resigna- 
tion. It  detached  man  from  earth.  It 
inspired,  or  attempted  to  inspire,  a  desire 
for  the  ideal  which  it  represented  as  the 
goal  of  the  sage,  who,  true  child  of  God,1 
prepared  for  any  torture,  even  for  the 
cross,2  yet,  essentially  meek,3  sorrowed  for 
mankind,4  happy  if  he  might  die  for  it.5 

In  iambics  that  caressed  the  ear  like 
flutes,  poets  had  told  of  Jupitet  clothed 

1  De  Provid.  i.         3  C/.  Lactantius  vi.  17. 

8  Epit.  cxx.  13.        4  Lucanus  ii.  378.        6  Ibidem. 

[183] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

in  purple  and  glory.  They  had  told  of 
his  celestial  amours,  of  his  human  and  of 
his  inhuman  vices.  Seneca  believed  in 
Jupiter.  But  not  in  the  Jove  of  the  poets. 
That  god  dwelled  in  ivory  and  anapests. 
Seneca's  deity,  nowhere  visible,  was  every- 
where present.1  Creator  of  heaven  and 
earth,2  without  whom  there  is  nothing,8 
from  whom  nothing  is  hidden,4  and  to 
whom  all  belongs,5  our  Father,6  whose 
will  shall  be  done.7 

"Life,"  said  Seneca,  "is  a  tribulation, 
death  a  release.  In  order  not  to  fear 
death,"  he  added,  "think  of  it  always." 
The  day  on  which  it  comes  judges  all 

1  Nemo  novit  Deum.  Epit.  xxxi.  Ubique  Deus. 
Epit.  xli. 

3  Mundum    hujus    opens    dominum    et  artificem. 
Qusest.  nat.  i. 

8  Sine  quo  nihil  est.     Quaest  nat.  vii.  31. 

4  Nil  Deo  Clausam.    Ep.  Ixxxx. 

6  Omnia  habentem.    Ep.  xcv. 
8  Parens  noster.    Ep.  ex. 

7  Placeat  homini  quidquid  Deo  placuit.    Ep.  Ixxv. 

[184] 


JUPITER 

others.1  Meanwhile  comfort  those  that 
sorrow.2  Share  your  bread  with  them 
that  hunger.8  Wherever  there  is  a  hu- 
man being  there  is  place  for  a  good  deed.4 
Sin  is  an  ulcer.  Deliverance  from  it  is  the 
beginning  of  health  —  salvation,  salu- 
tem."  5 

Words  such  as  these  suggest  others. 
They  are  anterior  to  those  which  they 
recall.  The  latter  are  more  beautiful, 
they  are  more  ample,  there  is  in  them  a 
poetry  and  a  profundity  that  has  rarely 
been  excelled.  Yet,  it  may  be,  that  a 
germ  of  them  is  in  Seneca,  or,  more  ex- 
actly, in  theories  which,  beginning  in 
India,  prophets,  seers,  and  stoics  vari- 
ously interpreted  and  recalled. 

However  since  they  have  charmed  the 
world,  their  effect  on  Nero  was  curious. 

1  Ep.  xxvi.  4.       '  De  Clem.  ii.  6.       8  Ep.  xcv.  51. 
4  De  Vita  Beata,  14.  5  Ep.  xxviii.  9. 

[185] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

Seneca  was  his  preceptor.  But  so  too 
was  Art.  The  lessons  of  these  teachers, 
fusing  in  the  demented  mind  of  the  mon- 
ster, produced  transcendental  depravity, 
the  apogee  of  the  abnormal  and  the  epi- 
leptically  obscene.  What  is  more  im- 
portant, they  produced  Christianity. 

Christianity  already  existed  in  Rome, 
but  obscurely,  subterraneanly,  among 
a  class  of  poor  people  generally  detested, 
particularly  by  the  Jews.  Christianity 
was  not  as  yet  a  religion,  it  was  but  the 
belief  of  a  sect  that  announced  that  the 
world  was  to  be  consumed.  Presently 
Rome  was.  The  conflagration,  which 
was  due  to  Nero,  swept  everything  sacred 
away. 

Even  for  a  prince  that,  perhaps,  was 
excessive.  Nero  may  have  felt  that  he 
had  gone  too  far.  An  emperor  was  omnip- 
otent, he  was  not  inviolable.  Tiberius 
[186] 


JUPITER 

was  suffocated,  Caligula  was  stabbed, 
Claud  was  poisoned.  Nero,  it  may  be, 
in  feeling  that  he  had  gone  too  far,  felt 
also  that  he  needed  a  scapegoat.  Chris- 
tian pyromania  suggested  itself.  But 
probably  it  suggested  itself  first  to  the 
Jews,  who,  Renan  has  intimated,  de- 
nounced the  Christians  accordingly.  Such 
may  have  been  the  case.  In  any  event, 
then  it  was  that  Christianity  received  its 
baptism  of  blood. 

All  antiquity  was  cruel,  but,  barring 
perhaps  the  immense  Asiatic  butcheries, 
Nero  contrived  then  to  surpass  anything 
that  had  been  done.  Bloated  and  hide- 
ous, his  hair  done  up  in  a  chignon,  a  con- 
cave emerald  for  monocle,  in  the  crowded 
arena  he  assisted  at  the  rape  of  Christian 
girls.  Their  lovers,  their  brothers  and 
fathers  were  either  eaten  alive  by  beasts 
or,  that  night,  dressed  in  tunics  that  had 
[187] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

been  soaked  in  oil,  were  fastened  to  posts 
and  set  on  fire,  in  order  that,  as  human 
torches,  they  might  illuminate  palace 
gardens,  through  which,  costumed  as  a 
jockey,  Nero  raced. 

The  spectacle  in  the  ampitheatre,  which 
fifty  thousand  people  beheld;  the  suc- 
ceeding festival  at  which  all  Rome  as- 
sembled, were  two  acts  in  the  birthday 
of  a  faith. 

Then,  to  the  cradle,  presently,  Wise 
Men  came  with  gifts  —  the  gold,  the 
frankincense,  the  myrrh,  of  creeds  an- 
terior though  less  divine. 


[188] 


I 


VIII 

THE  NEC  PLUS  ULTRA 

T  was  after  fastidious  rites,  the  heart 
entirely  devout  and  on  his  knees,  that 
Angelico  di  Fiesole  drew  a  picture  of  the 
Christ.  The  attitude  is  emulative.  It 
is  with  brushes  dipped  in  holy  water  that 
Jesus  should  be  displayed,  though  more 
reverent  still  is  the  absence  of  any  de- 
lineation. 

Reverence  of  that  high  character  his- 
tory formerly  observed.  There  is  no  men- 
tion of  the  Saviour  in  the  chronicles  of  those 
who  were  blessed  in  being  his  contempo- 
raries. One  indiscreet  remark  of  Josephus 
has  been  recognized  as  the  interpolation 
of  a  later  hand,  well-intentioned  perhaps, 
[189] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

but  misguided.  Jesus  glows  in  the  Gospels. 
Yet  they  that  awaited  the  day  when,  in 
a  great  aurora  borealis,  the  Son  of  man 
should  appear,  had  passed  from  earth  be- 
fore one  of  the  evangels  was  written. 

It  was  a  hundred  years  later  before  the 
texts  that  comprise  the  New  Testament 
were  complete.  It  was  nearly  two  hun- 
dred before  they  were  definitive.  In  the 
interim  many  gospels  appeared.  Attrib- 
uted indifferently  to  each  of  the  Twelve, 
one  was  ascribed  to  Judas.  There  was 
a  Gospel  to  the  Hebrews,  a  Gospel  to  the 
Egyptians.  There  were  evangels  of 
Childhood,  of  Perfection  and  of  Mary. 

These  primitive  memoirs  were  based 
on  oral  accounts  of  occurrences  long  an- 
terior. Into  them  entered  extraneous 
beauties,  felicities  of  phrase  and  detail, 
which,  with  naif  effrontery,  were  put  into 
the  mouth  of  one  apostle  or  another,  even 
[190] 


THE  NEC  PLUS  ULTRA 

into  that  of  Jesus.  The  ascription  was 
regarded  as  highly  commendable.  It  was 
but  a  way  of  glorifying  the  Lord.  Be- 
sides, the  scenarii  of  these  pious  evo- 
cations the  prophets  had  traced  in  ad- 
vance. 

"Rejoice,  daughter  of  Zion;  shout, 
daughter  of  Jerusalem,  behold  thy  King 
cometh  unto  thee;  he  is  just  and  having 
salvation,  lowly  and  riding  upon  an 
ass." 

That  king  of  the  poor  whom  Zachariah 
had  foreseen,  the  stumbling  block  of 
Israel  that  Isaiah  had  foretold,  the  Son, 
mentioned  by  Hosea,  whom  Jahveh  had 
called  out  of  Egypt,  was  the  Saviour, 
ascending  in  glory  as  Elijah  had  done. 
A  passage  incorrectly  rendered  by  the 
Septuagint  indicated  a  virginal  birth. 
That  also  was  suggestive. 

The  little  biographies  in  which  these 
[191] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

developments  appeared  were  intended 
for  circulation  only  among  an  author's 
narrow  circle  of  immediate  friends,  at 
most  to  be  read  aloud  in  devout  reunions. 
If,  ultimately,  of  the  entire  collection, 
four  only  were  retained,  it  is  probably 
because  these  best  expressed  existing  con- 
victions. Though,  irrespective  of  their 
beauties,  Irenseus  said  that  there  had  to  be 
four  and  could  be  but  four,  for  the  reason 
that  there  are  four  seasons,  four  winds, 
four  corners  of  the  earth,  and  the  four 
revelations  of  Adam,  Noah,  Moses,  and 
Jesus. 

It  is  not  on  that  perhaps  arbitrary  de- 
duction that  their  validity  resides,  but 
rather  because  the  parables  and  miracles 
which  they  recite  became  the  spiritual 
nourishment  of  a  world.  To  their  title 
of  eternal  verities  they  have  other  and 
stronger  claims.  They  have  consoled 
[192] 


THE  NEC  PLUS  ULTRA 

and  they  have  ennobled.  Elder  creeds 
may  have  done  likewise,  but  these  lacked 
that  of  which  Christianity  was  the  unique 
possessor,  the  marvel  of  a  crucified  god. 

Saviours  there  had  been.  Mithra  was 
a  redeemer.  Zoroaster  was  born  of 
a  virgin.  Persephone  descended  into 
hell.  Osiris  rose  from  the  dead.  Go- 
tama  was  tempted  by  the  devil.  Moses 
was  transfigured.  Elijah  ascended  into 
heaven.  But  in  no  belief  is  there  a 
parallel  for  the  crucifixion,  although  in 
Hindu  legend,  Krishna,  a  divinity  whose 
mythical  infancy  a  mythical  prototype  of 
Herod  troubled,  died,  nailed  by  arrows 
to  a  tree. 

In  Oriental  lore  Krishna  is  held  to 
have  been  the  eighth  avatar  of  Vishnu, 
of  whom  Gotama  was  the  ninth.  Krishna 
was  therefore  anterior  to  the  Buddha,  at 
least  in  myth.  But  it  would  be  a  grave 
[193] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

impropriety  to  infer  that  with  the  legend 
concerning  him  the  narrative  of  the  cruci- 
fixion has  any  other  connection  than  the 
possible  one  of  having  suggested  it.  The 
Bhagavad-Purana,  in  which  the  legend 
occurs,  is  relatively  modern,  though  the 
legend  itself  may,  like  the  Tripitaka,  have 
existed  orally,  for  centuries,  before  it  was 
finally  committed  to  writing. 

There  can,  however,  be  no  impropriety 
in  recalling  analogies  that  exist  between 
the  Saviour  and  one  whom  the  Orient 
holds  also  divine.  These  analogies,  set 
forth  in  the  first  chapter  of  the  present 
volume,  are,  it  may  be,  wholly  fortuitous, 
though  Pliny  stated  that,  centuries  before 
his  day,  disciples  of  Gotama  were  estab- 
lished on  the  Dead  Sea  and,  from  a  pas- 
sage in  Josephus,  it  seems  probable  that 
the  Essenes  were  Buddhists,  in  the  same 
degree  perhaps  that  the  Pharisees  were 
[194] 


THE  NEC  PLUS  ULTRA 

Parsis.  But  the  point  is  also  obscure. 
It  is  immaterial  as  well.  The  Gospels 
were  not  written  in  Jerusalem  but  mainly 
in  Rome,  where  crucifixions  were  com- 
mon, as  they  were,  for  that  matter,  through- 
out the  East,  but  where,  too,  all  religions 
were  acclimated  and  the  supernatural 
was  at  home. 

Rome  had  witnessed  the  tours  de  force 
of  Apollonios  of  Tyana.  Those  of  Simon 
the  Magician  had  also  been  beheld. 
Rome  had  seen,  or,  it  may  be,  thought 
she  believed  she  had  seen,  Vespasian 
cure  the  halt  and  the  blind  with  a  touch. 
The  atmosphere  then  was  charged  with 
the  marvellous.  The  temples  were  filled 
with  prodigies,  with  strange  gods,  beckon- 
ing chimeras,  credulous  crowds. 

There  was  something  superior.  Rome 
was  the  depository  of  the  legends  and  lore 
of  the  world.  A  haunt  of  the  Muses,  the 
[195] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

sensual  city  was  a  hermitage  of  philosophy 
as  well.  These  things  collectively  repre- 
sented a  great  literary  feast,  of  which  not 
all  the  courses  have  descended  to  us, 
though,  as  is  not  impossible,  a  lost  dish 
or  two,  transmuted,  by  the  alchemy  of 
faith,  from  dross  into  gold,  the  Gospels 
may  perhaps  contain. 

In  that  case  there  is  cause  for  great 
thankfulness.  Moreover,  assuming  the 
transmutation,  no  impiety  can  be  implied. 
It  was  as  usual  and  as  indicated  as  were 
papyrus  and  the  stylus.  It  is  common 
to-day  for  a  poet,  before  spreading  his 
own  wings,  to  contemplate  those  of  an- 
other. Inspiration  is  infectious. 

A  page  of  verse,  whether  Hindu,  Per- 
sian, Egyptian,  Greek,  or  Latin,  was  as 
useful  then.  Dante  fed  on  the  trouba- 
dours. They  are  lost  and  forgot.  He 
divinely  stands  greater  than  the  tallest 
[196] 


THE  NEC  PLUS  ULTRA 

of  them  all.  In  a  measure  the  same  may 
be  true  of  those  from  whom  the  Gospels 
came.  Yet  with  a  very  notable  differ- 
ence. The  Divina  Commedia  was  written 
for  all  time.  So  too  were  the  Gospels. 
But  not  intentionally.  They  were  written 
to  prepare  man  for  the  immediate  ter- 
mination of  the  world.  With  the  most 
perfect  propriety,  therefore,  anything  ser- 
viceable could  have  been  utilized  and 
probably  was.  The  devout  had  but  to 
lift  their  eyes.  In  the  words  of  Isaiah, 
there,  before  them,  were  the  treasures 
of  nations;  there  were  the  camels  and 
dromedaries  bearing  from  every  side  in- 
cense and  gold;  there  were  the  sons  of 
strangers  to  build  up  their  walls. 

The  sons  were  many,  the  treasures  as 

great.     Even    otherwise    there    was    the 

Law,  there  too  were  the  Prophets.   Moses 

fasted  for  forty  days.     Elisha  performed 

[197] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

a  miracle  of  the  loaves,  if  he  did  not  that 
of  the  fishes.  Job  saw  the  Lord  walking 
upon  the  sea.  Jeremiah  said :  "  Seek  and 
ye  shall  find."  Isaiah  bid  those  that 
sorrowed  come  and  be  consoled.  In  the 
poem  of  that  poet  the  servant  of  the  Lord 
had  vinegar  when  he  thirsted,  he  was 
spat  upon  and  for  his  garments  lots  were 
cast. 

In  an  effort  to  fill  in  a  picture  of  which 
the  central  figure  had  passed  from  the 
real  to  the  ideal,  these  things  may  have 
been  suggestive.  So  also,  perhaps,  was 
the  Talmud.  The  redaction  of  that  chaos 
began  in  the  second  century.  But  the 
Vedas,  the  Homeric  poems,  the  Tripitaka 
as  well,  existed  in  memory  long  before 
they  were  committed  to  writing.  The 
same  is  true  of  the  Talmud.  Orally  it 
existed  prior  to  the  Christ.  Considered 
as  literature,  if  it  may  be  so  considered, 
[198] 


THE  NEC  PLUS  ULTRA 

it  is  the  reverse  of  endearing.  But  of  the 
many  maxims  that  it  contains  there  are 
some  of  singular  charm.  Among  others 
is  the  Lay  not  up  for  yourselves  treasures 
on  earth.1  The  origin  of  that,  as  already 
indicated,  is  traceable  to  the  Tripitaka, 
which,  parenthetically,  were  so  well  known 
in  Babylon  that  Gotama  was  there  re- 
garded as  a  Chaldean  seer.  That  abridge- 
ment of  the  Law  which  is  called  the 
Golden  Rule  is  also  in  the  Talmud,2  as 
also,  before  the  Talmud  was,  it  was  in 
the  Tripitaka.  The  injunction  to  love 
one's  enemies  is  equally  in  both.  So  is 
the  very  excellent  suggestion  that  one 
should  consider  one's  own  faults  before 
admonishing  a  brother  concerning  his 
defects.  But  the  perhaps  subtle  intima- 
tion that  the  desire  to  commit  adultery 

1  Talmud  Babli :    Baba  bathra,  11  a. 

2  Schabbath,  37  a. 

[199] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

is  as  reprehensible  as  the  act,  and  the 
rather  extravagant  statement  that  it  is 
easier  for  a  camel  to  pass  through  the  eye 
of  a  needle  than  for  a  rich  man  to  enter 
the  kindgom  of  heaven,  these,  originally, 
were  perhaps  uniquely  Talmudic.  Cur- 
rently cited  with  multiple  others  they  were 
all  so  many  common  sayings,  which, 
strung  together  in  the  Gospels,  became 
a  rosary  of  most  perfect  pearls. 

In  a  passage  of  Irenaeus  it  is  stated  that 
the  Gospel  according  to  St.  Matthew  was 
arranged  by  the  Church  for  the  benefit 
of  the  Jews  who  awaited  a  Messiah  de- 
scended from  David.  A  Syro-Chaldaic 
evangel,  known  as  the  Gospel  to  the  He- 
brews, had  then  appeared.  So  also  had 
the  Gospel  according  to  St.  Mark.  But 
these  offered  no  evidence  that  Jesus  was 
the  one  they  sought.  Another  was  then 
prepared.  Written  in  Greek  and  bear- 
[200] 


THE  NEC  PLUS  ULTRA 

ing  the  authoritative  name  of  Matthew,  it 
traced  from  David,  Joseph's  descent. 

The  narrative  continued:  "Now  the 
birth  of  Jesus  Chirst  was  in  this  wise. 
When  as  his  mother  Mary  was  espoused 
to  Joseph,  before  they  came  together,  she 
was  found  with  child  by  the  Holy  Ghost. 
Then  Joseph  her  husband  being  a  just 
man  and  not  willing  to  make  her  a  publick 
example,  was  minded  to  put  her  away 
privily.  But  while  he  thought  on  these 
things,  behold,  the  angel  of  the  Lord 
appeared  unto  him  in  a  dream,  saying, 
Joseph,  thou  son  of  David,  fear  not  to 
take  unto  thee  Mary  thy  wife:  for  that 
which  is  conceived  in  her  is  of  the  Holy 
Ghost." 

The  genealogy  completed,  though  per- 
haps inadequately,  since  Jesus,  not  being 
a  son  of  Joseph,  could  not  have  descended 
from  David,  the  Church  continued : "  Now 
[201] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

all  this  was  done  that  it  might  be  fulfilled 
which  was  spoken  of  the  Lord  by  the 
prophet  saying,  Behold  a  virgin  shall  be 
with  child  and  shall  bring  forth  a  son  and 
call  his  name  Emmanuel." 

The  prophecy  mentioned  occurs  in 
Isaiah  vii,  14.  In  the  King  James  ver- 
sion it  is  as  follows;  " Behold  a  virgin  shall 
conceive  and  bear  a  son  and  shall  call 
his  name  Immanuel."  But  the  Aramaic 
reading  is:  "Behold  an  'almd  shall  con- 
ceive." 'Alma  means  young  woman. 
The  Septuagint,  in  translating  it,  em- 
ployed the  term  irapOevos,  or  maiden.  In 
Matthew  the  term  was  retained. 

Matthew,  at  the  time,  had  long  been 
dead.  Even  had  he  been  living  it  is  im- 
probable that  he  could  write  in  Greek. 
Unfortunately  there  were  others  who 
could  not  only  write  Greek  but  read  He- 
brew. In  particular,  there  was  a  rabbi 
[202] 


THE  NEC  PLUS  ULTRA 

Aquila  who  retranslated  Isaiah  with  no 
other  purpose  than  the  malign  object  of 
definitely  re-establising  the  exact  expres- 
sion which  the  old  poet  had  used.1 

It  was  presumably  in  these  circum- 
stances that  the  Evangel  of  Mary  was 
advanced.  Among  other  elucidations, 
the  work  contained  professional  testimony 
of  the  immaculacy  that  was  claimed. 
Additionally,  in  reparation  of  the  earlier 
oversight,  the  Virgin  was  genealogically 
descended  from  the  royal  line. 

That,  however,  is  apocryphal,  and  if, 
regarding  the  other  genealogy,  exegesis 
has  since  obscured  the  luminousness  of  the 
method  adapted  by  the  Church,  the  latter's 
intention  was  none  the  less  irreproachable, 
and  that  alone  imports.  Before  it,  before 
the  miracle  of  the  nativity  and  the  divine 
episodes  of  the  transfiguration,  crucifixion, 

1  Renan :  Les  Evangiles. 
[203] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

resurrection,  and  ascension,  reverently  the 
Occident  has  knelt.  They  are  indeed 
divine.  If  they  did  not  occur  in  Judea, 
they  have  occurred  ever  since.  Con- 
tinuously, in  the  hearts  of  the  devout,  they 
are  repeated. 

Unhappily  there  were  heretics  then  as 
now.  To  the  Gnostics,  Jesus  was  an 
aeon  that  had  never  been.  To  the  Doce- 
tists,  he  was  a  phantasm.  There  are 
always  brutes  that  can  believe  but  in  the 
reality  of  things.  There  are  others  to 
whom  the  symbolic  is  dumb.  In  the 
Gospels  there  is  much  that  is  figurative, 
there  is  more  that  is  ineffable,  there  are 
suggestions  sheerly  ideal. 

"  In  my  Father's  house  are  many  man- 
sions," the  Saviour  declared.  In  his 
own  ministry  there  are  as  many  lights. 
He  was  a  vagrant  and  he  created  pure 
sentiment.  He  was  a  nihilist  and  he 
[204] 


THE  NEC  PLUS  ULTRA 

inspired  a  new  conception  of  life.  He 
said  he  had  not  come  to  destroy  and  he 
changed  the  face  of  the  earth.  He  re- 
mitted the  sins  of  a  harlot  and  condemned 
both  marriage  and  love.  There  are  other 
antitheses,  deeper  contradictions.  These 
perhaps  are  more  apparent  than  real. 
Behind  them  there  may  have  been  the 
co-ordination  of  a  central  thought.  Of 
many  gospels  but  few  remain.  Among  the 
lost  evangels  was  one  that  Valentinian  said 
was  imparted  only  to  the  more  spiritual  of 
the  disciples.  It  may  be  that  in  it  a  main 
idea  was  elucidated  and,  perhaps,  as  a  con- 
sequence, the  meaning  of  the  esoteric  proc- 
lamation: "Before  Abraham  was  I  am." 
Yet  though  now  the  authoritative  ex- 
planation be  lacking,  its  significance  seems 
to  run  beneath  the  texts.  At  the  first 
apparition  of  Jesus,  the  chief  preoccupa- 
tion of  those  that  stood  about  was  what 
[205] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

prophet  of  the  old  days  had  returned 
in  the  new.  Some  thought  him  Elijah. 
Others  Jeremiah.  Antipas  feared  that 
he  was  the  Baptist  revived.  Jesus  him- 
self asked  the  disciples  whom  he  was  said 
to  be.  Later  he  assured  them  that  the 
awaited  return  of  Elijah  had  been  accom- 
plished in  John.  That  assurance,  to- 
gether with  the  perplexities  regarding 
him  and  the  esoteric  announcement  which 
he  made  concerning  himself,  can  hardly 
indicate  anything  else  than  a  belief  in 
reincarnation. 

The  belief,  common  to  all  antiquity, 
though  not  necessarily  valid  on  that 
account,  is  not  discernible  in  Hebrew 
thought,  perhaps  for  the  reason  that  it  is 
not  perceptible  in  Babylonian.  Yet  the 
myth  of  Eden  barely  conceals  it.  It  is 
almost  obvious  in  the  allegory  of  Beth-el. 
Solomon  said:  "I  was  set  up  from  ever- 
[206] 


THE  NEC  PLUS  ULTRA 

lasting,  from  the  beginning  or  ever  earth 
was."  If  the  idea  contained  in  that 
statement  was  not  a  part  of  the  phi- 
losophy attributed  to  the  Christ,  it  might 
have  been.  The  amount  of  beauty  stored 
in  it  is  more  enormous  than  in  any 
other. 

To  the  materialist  the  beauty  is  mean- 
ingless. To  the  mathematician  it  has 
the  value  of  a  zero  from  which  the  pe- 
riphery has  gone.  But  at  the  Pillars  of 
Hercules  early  geographers  put  on  their 
maps :  Hie  deficit  orbis  —  Here  ends  the 
world.  They  had  no  suspicion  that  be- 
yond that  world  there  stretched  another 
twice  as  great.  Materialists  may  be 
equally  naif.  On  the  other  hand,  they 
may  not  be.  The  theory  of  reincarna- 
tion is  one  that  transcends  the  limits  of 
experience. 

Of  the  many  tenets  of  the  belief  there 
[207] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

are  but  two  with  which  the  matter-of- 
fact  agrees.  One  of  them  concerns  the 
conservation  of  energy,  the  other  the 
negation  of  death.  Theory  and  practice 
unite  in  admitting  that  the  supply  of 
energy  is  invariable.  Constantly  it  is 
transformed  and  as  constantly  transposed, 
but  whether  it  enter  into  fungus  or  star, 
into  worm  or  man,  the  loss  of  a  particle 
never  occurs.  Death  consequently  is  but 
the  constituent  of  a  change.  When  it 
comes,  that  which  was  living  assumes  a 
state  that  has  in  it  the  potentiality  of 
another  form.  A  tenement  has  crumbled 
and  a  tenant  gone  forth.  Though  just 
where  is  the  riddle. 

In  the  thousand  and  one  nights  that 
were  less  astronomic  than  our  own,  it 
was  thought  that  the  riddle  was  answered. 
Poets  had  erected  an  edifice  of  verse  and 
called  it  Creation.  In  the  strophes  of 
[208] 


THE  NEC  PLUS  ULTRA 

the  epic  the  earth  was  a  flat  and  station- 
ary parallelogram.  About  the  earth,  and 
uniquely  for  its  benefit,  sun,  moon  and 
stars  paraded.  Above  was  a  deity  one  or 
multiple.  Below  were  places  of  vivid  dis- 
comfort. To  the  latter,  or  to  the  former, 
the  soul  of  man  proceeded.  There  were 
no  other  resorts.  Creation  had  its  limits. 

Poets  younger  yet  more  gray  have 
presented  a  different  conception.  In  the 
glare  of  a  million  million  of  suns  they 
have  sent  the  earth  spinning  like  a  midge. 
Beyond  the  uttermost  horizon  they  have 
strewn  other  systems,  other  worlds;  be- 
yond the  latter,  more.  Wherever  imagi- 
ination  in  its  weariness  would  set  a  limit, 
there  is  space  begun. 

There  too  is  energy.  Throughout  the 
stretch  of  universes  the  same  force  pul- 
sates that  is  recognizable  here.  A  deduc- 
tion is  obvious.  Throughout  infinity  are 
[209] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

sentient  beings,  perhaps  our  brothers, 
perhaps  ourselves. 

The  obvious,  very  frequently,  is  mis- 
leading. But  the  dream  of  precipitation 
into  that  wonderful  tornado  of  worlds 
has  the  merit  of  more  colourful  idealism 
than  that  which  was  formerly  displayed. 
Taken  but  as  an  hypothesis,  it  holds 
suggestions  ampler  than  any  other  con- 
veys. It  intimates  that  just  as  the  butter- 
fly rises  from  the  chrysalis,  so  does  the 
spiritual  rise  from  the  flesh.  It  indicates 
that  just  as  the  sun  cannot  set,  so  is  it 
impossible  for  death  to  be. 

There  are  topics  about  which  words 
hover  like  enchanted  bees.  Death  is 
one  of  them.  Medisevally  it  was  repre- 
sented by  a  skeleton  to  which  prose  had 
given  a  rictus,  poetry  a  scythe,  and  phi- 
losophy wings.  From  its  eyries  it  swooped 
spectral  and  sinister.  Previously  it  was 
[210] 


THE  NEC  PLUS  ULTRA 

more  gracious.  In  Greece  it  resembled 
Eros.  Among  its  attributes  was  beauty. 
It  did  not  alarm.  It  beckoned  and  con- 
soled. The  child  of  Night,  the  brother 
of  Sleep,  it  was  less  funereal  than  nar- 
cotic. The  theory  of  it  generally  was 
beneficent.  But  not  enduring.  In  the 
change  of  things  death  lost  its  charm. 
It  became  a  sexless  nightmare-frame  of 
bones  topped  by  a  grinning  skull.  That 
perhaps  was  excessive.  In  epicurean 
Rome  it  was  a  marionnette  that  invited 
you  to  wreathe  yourself  with  roses  before 
they  could  fade.  In  the  Muslim  East  it 
was  represented  by  Azrael,  who  was  an 
angel.  In  Vedic  India  it  was  represented 
by  Yama,  who  was  a  god.  But  medise- 
vally  in  Europe  the  skeleton  was  preferred. 
Since  then  it  has  changed  again.  It  is 
no  longer  a  spectral  vampire.  It  has 
acquired  the  serenity  of  a  natural  law. 
[211] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

Regarding  the  operation  of  that  law  there 
are  perhaps  but  three  valid  conjectures. 
Rome  entertained  all  of  them.  There, 
there  was  a  tomb  on  which  was  written 
Umbra.  Before  it  was  another  on  which 
was  engraved  Nihil.  Between  the  two 
was  a  portal  behind  which  the  Nee  plus 
ultra  stood  revealed. 

The  portal,  fashioned  by  the  philoso- 
phy of  ages,  still  is  open,  wider  than  be- 
fore, on  vaster  horizons  and  unsuspected 
skies.  Through  it  one  may  see  the  expli- 
cation of  things ;  the  reason  why  men  are 
not  born  equal,  why  some  are  rich  and 
some  are  poor,  why  some  are  weak 
and  some  are  strong,  why  some  are  wise 
and  many  are  not.  One  may  see  there  too 
the  reason  of  joys  and  sorrows,  the  cause 
of  tears  and  smiles.  One  may  see  also 
how  the  soul  changes  its  raiment  and  how 
it  happens  to  have  a  raiment  to  change. 
[212] 


THE  NEC  PLUS  ULTRA 

One  may  see  all  these  things,  and  others 
besides,  in  the  revelation  that  this  life, 
being  the  refuse  of  many  deaths,  has 
acquired  merits  and  demerits  in  accord- 
ance with  which  are  present  punishments 
and  rewards. 

In  proportion  as  these  are  utilized  or 
disregarded,  so  perhaps  is  retrogression 
induced  or  progress  achieved.  But  not 
in  Hades  or  yet  in  Elysium.  These  were 
the  inventions  of  man  for  his  brother. 
So  also  was  the  very  neighbourly  heaven 
which  the  early  Church  devised.  But 
because  that  has  gone  from  the  sidereal 
chart,  it  does  not  follow  that  there  is  no 
such  place.  Because  there  is  nothing 
alarming  under  the  earth,  it  does  not 
follow  that  hell  has  ceased  to  be.  On  the 
contrary.  Both  are  constant,  though  it  be 
but  in  the  heart. 

In  the  light  of  reincarnation  it  is 
[213] 


THE  LORDS  OF  THE  GHOSTLAND 

probable  that  neither  can  occur  there  with 
out  anterior  cause.  But  probably  too  it  is 
the  preponderance  of  either  that  creates 
the  mystery  of  life,  as  it  may  also  fore- 
shadow the  portent  of  death. 

Death,  it  may  be,  is  not  merely  a  law 
but  a  place,  perhaps  a  garage  which  the 
traveller  reaches  on  a  demolished  motor, 
but  whence  none  can  proceed  until  all  old 
scores  are  paid.  Pending  payment,  there, 
perhaps  the  soul  must  wait.  But  the  bill 
of  its  past  acquitted,  it  may  be  that  then  it 
shall  be  free  to  pursue  on  trillions  of  spheres 
the  diversified  course  of  endless  life  —  free 
to  pass  from  world  to  world,  from  beati- 
tude to  bliss,  from  transformation  to 
transfiguration,  from  the  transitory  to 
the  eternal;  weaving,  meanwhile,  a  gar- 
land of  migrations  that  stretch  from  sky 
to  sky,  marrying  its  memoirs  with  those 
of  the  universe,  and,  finally,  from  some 
[214] 


THE  NEC  PLUS  ULTRA 

ultimate  zenith,  reviewing,  as  it  casts 
them  aside,  the  masks  of  concluded  in- 
carnations. 

The  prospect,  overwhelming  in  beauty, 
is  really  divine.  The  divine  is  always 
Utopian.  But  there  is  the  supreme  Al- 
hambra  of  dream.  It  exceeds  any  other, 
however  excessive  another  may  be.  It  is 
the  Nee  plus  ultra.  Into  it  all  may 
wander  and  never  weary  of  the  wonders 
that  are  there.  It  may  be  unrealizable, 
but  for  that  very  reason  it  must  be  also 
ideal. 


FINIS  HISTORIC  DEORUM 


[215] 


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